‘There are no moral facts.’ Discuss
This claim is the rejection of moral realism and cognitivism. The central issue is
whether our moral statements are capable of being true or false and of whether we
can possess moral knowledge. Those who answer ‘yes’ are moral realists. They
maintain that there are moral facts and that our moral statements are capable of
being true or false in virtue of the moral facts. That is, the realist claims there are
facts concerning the rightness or wrongness of an action or state of affairs. Moral
realists are also moral cogntivists. They hold that we can have knowledge of the
moral facts. Realists hold that moral facts are objective. What is right is not
determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right.
I shall explain that there is a set of powerful challenges to realism and cognitivism.
These point to the problems the realist faces in explaining the nature of moral facts
and our epistemic access to them. Furthermore, the critic argues that realism is
unable to account for the motivational force of moral judgements – when one judges
that something is, say, good or bad, virtuous or vicious, then one is thereby
motivated to act in the appropriate way. In the face of these challenges to realist
metaphysics, epistemology and moral psychology, anti-realists such as Hume and
Ayer argue that we should regard our moral talk as expressions of attitude or
emotion. In examining this expressivist challenge I shall argue that realism can be
articulated in a way that defuses the force of the challenges while preserving the
core motivations for realism.
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The immediate metaphysical worry is to explain what kind of fact a moral one is. If
we take a fact to be state of affairs – how things are – then moral facts are those
which possess some feature or property in virtue of which they have an evaluative or
normative element. Realism has two options.
The first realist option is naturalism. This analyses moral properties and facts as
natural facts or combinations of natural facts. That is, as fully analysable as features
of the world that can be specified in terms of the natural sciences. The goodness of
an act or state of affairs (say helping someone cross the road) is identical to or
reducible to some (combination of) natural fact – say the promotion of well-being or
happiness.
One way of spelling out naturalism is utilitarianism. Here the moral property of
goodness is identified with the natural property of happiness. However, any attempt
to identify moral properties with natural ones is ruled out by the second realist option,
non-naturalism. A moral property such as goodness is not part of or analysable in
terms of the objects and properties picked out by (what we today call) the natural
and social sciences. The goodness of a person or the rightness of an action is a
simple sui generis property which belongs intrinsically to the thing in question.
A highly influential version of non-naturalism is developed in the work of G.E. Moore
known as Intuitionism. Moore believed that much of the thinking about the nature of
moral judgements rested on what he called ‘the naturalistic fallacy’. Simply put the
‘fallacy’ is committed in the identification of the simple, non-natural property of
goodness with some natural property – the sort of property natural sciences and
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psychology refer to.
According to Moore most philosophers have conflated the
property of goodness with the things that possess it or with some other property(s)
that good things have. However, Moore explains that we cannot define ‘good’ in
more basic terms because it is a simple and unanalysable property. Drawing an
analogy with our knowledge of colours whereby you know what ‘yellow’ is through
direct acquaintance with yellow objects, Moore proposes that one knows a good
action when one encounters it.
The key element in Moore’s criticism of naturalism is his Open Question Argument
(‘OQA’). Suppose, Moore says, goodness were identical with some other property.
Let us say that goodness is identical with the promotion of happiness (his own
example is what we desire to desire). Now ‘good’ and ‘happiness’ are synonymous
and every competent speaker would therefore know the following naturalistic identity
claim:
NI
goodness is the promotion of happiness
It now follows that to ask ‘is that which promotes happiness good?’ demonstrates a
lack of understanding or sense on the part of the enquirer. It is not a real or live
question. For, given our definition of good, it is just the same as asking ‘is that which
is good, good?’ However, Moore explains that it is always an open question to ask of
some act or state whether it is good or not. To ask if promoting happiness is good is
always a live or open enquiry. So, good does not just mean the promotion of
happiness (or whatever natural property(s)) and NI is false. Moral realism is
therefore committed to an understanding of moral facts as non-natural.
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What then is the relationship between the natural and non-natural properties or
facts? Here intuitionism appeals to the idea that while the moral facts are not
identical to or analysable in terms of the natural facts, there is a form of dependence
on the non-moral facts. In two situations which are exactly alike with respect to the
natural facts, there can be no difference in moral terms. No two things (e.g. persons,
acts, states of affairs) can differ in evaluative terms without also differing in their nonevaluative properties. This relationship is known as supervenience.
How are we to account for moral knowledge if moral facts are non-natural? Moore
holds that when we are presented with something good our judgement of value is
self-evident. This appeal to self-evidence may not strike you as compelling. What if A
and B sincerely disagree over what is self-evident? Moore uses the term ‘intuition’ to
refer to our direct awareness of goodness. A key objection to non-naturalism is that it
cannot adequately explain the way in which we come to have knowledge of the
moral facts. To hold that the self-evidence of the goodness of some state of affairs is
self-evident in a way analogous to our perception of colour is not an explanation of
how we can grasp or intuit some non-natural property. In the end it looks as if we
have to appeal to our possession of special moral faculty - and that looks mysterious
in the sense that it stands apart from our overall picture of the world as describable
in terms of the natural sciences.
Realism thus faces a challenge grounded on the strangeness of moral facts and how
we could know about them. Perhaps, though, an even more serious set of criticisms
is developed by Hume. The problem is not one of spelling out what a moral fact is,
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but of having any reason to judge there to be any coherent explanatory need for
such facts. Let me explain.
Hume argued that morality is grounded in sentiment and not reason. When we
investigate our moral judgements of something being right or wrong we can never
locate some feature of the world – a matter of fact – which we can call vice or virtue,
right or wrong. Instead, we can locate in our own psychology feelings of approval or
disapproval. There is no moral fact in virtue of which we are forming a judgement
capable of being true or false, Rather, we have (complex) sentiments or emotions
which direct our judgements and actions about the world.
Alongside this analysis Hume makes the logical point that we cannot derive an ought
from an is. His point is that realists make a critical error in deducing from a
description of the world a moral judgement. Logic is conservative. You can only get
out what you put in. In describing the world we talk of what there is. In drawing moral
conclusions we talk of what ought to be the case. Yet, as matter of logic a conclusion
containing ‘ought’ cannot be drawn from a set of ‘ought-free’ premises’ This has
been taken by many to mean that there is an unbridgeable gulf between a
description of the world and talk of what we ought to do. As such it has been offered
as a decisive reason to block any attempt to analyse moral language in terms of the
descriptive language we apply to the world.
A third argument takes us into the territory of moral psychology. A widely held thesis
is that in forming a moral judgement one is motivated to act appropriately. This is
internalism in theories of moral motivation. Hume notes that when we make a moral
judgement we are motivated to act, but motivations are never beliefs.
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Beliefs are states which represent the world; they aim to tell us how things are, to
report the facts. As such beliefs and the facts they report are ‘inert’. They do not
move or motivate us to do anything. The motivation to act is supplied by desires. To
have a desire is to have a mental state that tells you how the world should be. To
desire a drink is to be in state directing a (small) change in the world: the world
should move from one in which I lack a drink to one in which I have one.
Moral judgements cannot be beliefs about moral facts. For, according to Hume’s
picture of human psychology beliefs are not motivating. A moral response is a
commitment to action. It is in this way intrinsically motivating. A moral judgement
must therefore really belong to a different class of mental states – sentiment or
emotion or desire.
Under the influence of Logical Positivism non-cognitivism finds expression in
emotivist or expressivist theories of the twentieth century. For example, A.J. Ayer
argued that our moral talk should not be understood as aiming to express truths
about right or wrong notwithstanding its propositional form (i.e. when we talk morals
we do so in declarative sentences which appear capable of being judged true or
false). Instead, moral discourse should be understood as an expression of attitude or
emotion. The purpose of a moral judgement is not to express a truth that is somehow
out there in the world, but to express my attitude with respect to some act or state of
affairs and to influence those of others.
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The key motivations for emotivism are (a) agreement with Moore that moral facts
could not be natural facts, and (b) the Logical Positivist theory of meaning – the
Verification Principle. The Open Question Argument rules out the possibility that
moral facts could be analysed in terms of natural facts and so be discoverable
through experience. This leaves the realist having to maintain that moral facts are
non-natural. However, this is ruled out by the Verification Principle.
The Verification Principle states that a proposition can be verified (demonstrated to
be true or false) either if it is true simply in virtue of the meanings of the
term/symbols used (definitions, tautologies) or against observation statements.
Moral statements are not analytically true. It is not a mere matter of definition or
tautology that cruelty is wrong or courage is a virtue. Furthermore, nor can such
moral statements be verified by sense-experience if Intuitionism is true. Intuitionism
is the view that moral properties are simple, non-natural properties. That means that
the moral properties themselves cannot be described in the empirical terms of the
natural or social sciences. There is no empirical evidence which could verify the
truth of a statement about a moral property. Moral statements are thus unverifiable
and so literally meaningless.
If those claims are correct then realism is indeed impaled on the horns of a dilemma.
Realism must either describe naturalistic states or non-natural states. Yet, according
to Ayer both views are untenable. So, we should reject the realism and its
commitment to the view that moral discourse is (as its grammatical form suggests)
descriptive and truth-evaluable.
Our moral judgements must be expressions of
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feeling or attitude. To hold that something is right is a sophisticated way of saying
‘hooray!’
I shall finish by suggesting how realism can maintain internalism about moral
motivation while defusing the ant-realist criticism. First, non-cogntivosm in its
expressivist cannot account for the role of moral judgements in moral reasoning.
Consider the following claim.
(1) Murder is wrong.
Now, (1) has the grammatical form of an assertion and as such it can be evaluated in
terms of truth or falsity. In the context of a declarative statement, the expressivist
analyses this assertion as an expression of feeling.
However, the proposition ‘murder is wrong’ can appear in contexts in which it does
not have the role of an assertion. Consider the conditional statement:
(2) If murder is wrong, then getting your brother to murder is wrong.
In the antecedent (the if-clause) of (2) ‘murder is wrong’ is not being used to make
an assertion. In (2) the speaker is not stating that murder is wrong. Instead the
speaker is presenting a hypothesis about what follows if it is wrong. In this
unasserted context ‘murder is wrong’ it is not used to express disapproval of murder.
The Expressivist must allow that we know what is meant by both (1) and (2). Yet,
Expressivism must also hold that the semantic function (meaning) in (2) of ‘murder is
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wrong’ must be different from that given for the apparently straightforward assertion
expressed by ‘murder is wrong’ in (1).
Now there is a problem in explaining the apparently valid inference:
(1)
Murder is wrong.
(2)
If Murder is wrong, then getting your brother to murder people is wrong.
Therefore:
(3)
Getting your brother to murder people is wrong.
If the semantic function of ‘murder is wrong’ differs in (1) and (2), then surely one is
not entitled to arrive at (3). For the argument to be valid the meaning of ‘murder is
wrong’ must be the same in each of (1) and (2). The above argument from (1) and
(2) to (3) is apparently no more valid than:
(4)
My beer has a head on it.
(5)
If something has a head on it, then it must have eyes and ears.
Therefore:
(6)
My beer must have eyes and ears.
This argument is invalid. We are only tempted to think the conclusion follows if we
are insensitive to the reliance on the equivocation between the two senses of ‘head’,
in (4) and (5) respectively.
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This suggests that realism may be essential to a coherent and common-sensical
account of moral reasoning. It leaves unresolved the unease we face in explaining
what a moral fact is. Let us turn to Philosophers such John McDowell and David
Wiggins who have (to put things roughly) articulated a version of realism which
draws on a parallel between secondary properties and moral properties.
Very roughly one may have this line of thought. In the case of colours we do not
have to suppose that a yellow object is yellow independently of human response.
Equally, the experience of the observer is not just down to her. Seeing the feathers
of a canary as yellow is not a matter of personal opinion or taste or decision or
practice. It depends on the physical microstructure of the bird in virtue of which its
feathers possess a certain reflective quality. Our experience of the bird also depends
on the way in which we are constituted so that we respond in certain ways to
features of the world. The yellowness of the canary is objective in the sense that it is
independent of any singular, particular human response. The yellowness of the bird
can only be experienced in its appearance to us, but there is a sense in which the
colour can persist unseen. Of course, that sense is not to be cashed out in terms of
the experience of perceiving yellowness. Rather the yellowness exists unperceived
in the sense that the surface structure of the bird’s feathers possess the dispositional
power to produce a particular kind of experience in a certain class of observers. It is,
so to speak, waiting for us to notice it. In this respect colour does not exist
independently of human responsiveness.
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When it comes to moral judgements we are disposed to respond to certain features
of the world in a particular way. The burning of the dog by a gang of boys elicits in us
the judgement – the recognition – of its wrongness. That wrongness is not a wholly
independent feature of the world since the wrongness is essentially to do with
judgement by us (just as colour is essentially to do with appearance to us). The
wrongness of the act is manifest in our judgement that the state of affairs before us
furnishes us with a reason to act.
If an account of moral properties can be offered to explain the sense in which they
have the objectivity and response-dependence of secondary properties, then one
may have an account that is sufficiently realist. For then our language is referring to
the moral facts understood as reasons for rational creatures like us to act and as
reasons they possess the normativity inherent in moral judgement and externally
grounded in the moral facts.
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