Moral relativism
C. George Boeree
August, 2011
In Turkish: Ahlaki Görecelik (translated by Zoltan Solak)
What we call good and bad are emotional responses we experience,
judgements we make, and complex combinations of these.
There are situations that cause us pain and other forms of distress,
to which we respond with fear, anxiety, disgust, and terror. We
respond to others in those situations with similar feelings, and we
label those responses sympathy, empathy, or compassion. These
responses are founded on instinct, bred into us because they aided
in our survival and ability to reproduce. They began as nurturant
tendencies towards close relatives, especially offspring. Learning
may extend these feelings to other situations and individuals, such
as when we feel disgust at an act of injustice or compassion for an
animal.
A second origin of our notions of good and bad lies in rational
self-interest: If I don't hurt you, you will be less likely to hurt
me. This extends to less direct forms of hurt: If I don't steal from
you, perhaps I won't need to waste my time guarding my belongings;
and so on. This can piggy-back on our instinct for compassion, so
that I don't hurt you so you won't hurt my loved ones.
We teach our children principles we have learned from experience.
Over time, these principles become a part of the culture, and
continue to be transmitted whether reinforced by experience or not.
They become codified as law, and a society may develop a justice
system with lists of crimes and appropriate punishments.
Note that these principles, no longer formed from experience, may
actually become counterproductive. And "justice" may come to involve
acts which are actually counter to the more fundamental principles
it is derived from, acts such as the use of excommunication,
torture, or the death penalty.
It is in our rational self-interest to contain the actions of others
by systems of justice - especially when some groups within our
society become inordinately powerful. The weak must work
collectively to protect themselves from the strong. They must even
protect themselves from other collectives similar to themselves.
This is the foundation of such things as sovereignty, democracy, and
civil rights.
Morality, rather than being based on universals or absolutes of
right and wrong, handed down from God or built into the very
structure of reality as karma, is something that has and continues
to evolve. If you look at the history of moral philosophy, systems
of justice, and theories of government, you can see the slow
movement towards compassion generalized to everyone, even despite
the all-to-frequent back-sliding into greed and violence. As Martin
Luther King Jr. once said, "The moral arc of the universe is long,
but it bends towards justice."
What is refered to as the naturalistic fallacy ("you can't draw a
moral 'ought' from a natural 'is'") is itself fallacious: "ought"
derives neatly from syllogisms that begin with a principle, even if
that principle is naturalistic. So, for example, if a creature has
the desire to live, then avoiding imminent danger is what it ought
to do. If a creature has nurturant instincts, then anything done to
promote the welfare of its infants is what it ought to do. That the
principle is relative to the creature and its circumstances is
irrelevant. No one is claiming that the creature "ought" to desire
to live or "ought" to have one instinct or another - only that,
given those desires or instincts, an "ought" (in fact, many
"oughts") is the logical consequence.
I've always been impressed by the "morality" of animals. Why do
animals behave as morally as they do? They certainly haven't
articulated any moral codes or principles. I doubt they comprehend
the idea of "universals". But they behave in a manner consistent
with their own best interests (and, quite commonly, the interests of
their offspring and other relations). Although they may hunt, kill,
and devour other creatures, they usually do so with what we refer to
as "innocence", that is to say, without evil intent, without any
desire to cause suffering. They do what needs to be done.
We are animals, too, and fairly sophisticated ones at that. With our
big brains, our capacity for communication, and our ability to
transmit our experiences beyond our valley and life-time, we can
refine "doing what needs to be done" into something that serves our
needs better and better.
It is obvious to most of us that certain tendencies in our cultures
serve our needs better: diplomacy rather than war; distribution of
wealth rather than hoarding; care for children, the elderly, the
sick, the needy; freedom of thought, expression, and action (to the
extent that those freedoms do not infringe upon the freedoms of
others); and so forth. Compassion, and, consequentially morality, is
a profoundly "selfish" thing.
© 2012, C. George Boeree