Brent, at Uncommon Descent, asked:
Is rape morally wrong because society says so?
Or:
Does society say rape is wrong because morality says so?
I answered:
I’m going to annoy you, I’m afraid, Brent, in my answer, but in for a penny…
“Morality” doesn’t “say” anything. People do. Collectively, people form a society, so it is reasonable to say that “society” says something – if that something is the collective mores, or precepts of a society.
So I’d say that people in a society collectively construct a shared system of moral precepts and those precepts include, in most societies, the precept that rape is wrong.
This seems to be fairly universal, probably because most societies develop a system that places a taboo on one person exploiting another for personal benefit. This is not surprising given that we are a social species and do better when we cooperate with each other than when we act individualistically.
So my answer is “closer to that first thing”, because the second doesn’t really make sense.
However, I would phrase it as:
In most societies, rape is regarded as morally wrong, because it violates the principle that underpins the continuation of a society that has potential net benefits for all.
He replied:
Sorry to take the last bit first, but . . .
However, I would phrase it as:
In most societies, rape is regarded as morally wrong, because it violates the principle that underpins the continuation of a society that has potential net benefits for all.
I’m surprised you would say this, not that it is inconsistent with your own beliefs on the matter, but that it leaves you completely open to, and obviously guilty of, WJM’s charges that a Darwinist system (system consistent with “Darwinism”) cannot condemn rape.
And the first bit last . . .
“Morality” doesn’t “say” anything. People do. Collectively, people form a society, so it is reasonable to say that “society” says something – if that something is the collective mores, or precepts of a society.
So I’d say that people in a society collectively construct a shared system of moral precepts and those precepts include, in most societies, the precept that rape is wrong.
This seems to be fairly universal, probably because most societies develop a system that places a taboo on one person exploiting another for personal benefit. This is not surprising given that we are a social species and do better when we cooperate with each other than when we act individualistically.
So my answer is “closer to that first thing”, because the second doesn’t really make sense.
Which all means that my original challenge to your system of morality, in fact, is correct and undermines it completely; there is no actual morality whatsoever.
If people of a society are the source of morality, then people of a society govern morality, and morality doesn’t govern people of a society.
And I invited him to continue the conversation here.
What Brent seems to be saying is that a morality – a system of oughts and ought nots – somehow doesn’t count as “morality” if it is constructed by a socciety of human beings.
My response to Brent is to ask: what morality can he name that is not constructed by a society of human beings?
Rape is omitted in the ten commandments. What the bible says about rape is not very edifying.
Your response is to beg the question? That doesn’t seem like a good response. More directly, the actual morality.
I’m saying that the thing that is constructed is not master of its constructor.
Morality is the code which we are supposed to conform to. But, you have it that the code is conformed to us. And, if it is, it must be changed to conform to us as we change (if we change), which renders it neither objective or binding.
Again: If man is the source of the moral law, then man governs the moral law, and the moral law doesn’t govern man.
Well, what interests me is the idea that morality isn’t really morality if it is constructed by society.
It comes down to this idea of “absolute” morality – which is all fine and good, but if human beings have to figure out what this absolute morality entails, then it’s not practically different from a constructed one.
Brent’s use of “obviously” is mere bluster. He hasn’t made an argument at all.
Hi, Brent, welcome to TSZ!
I don’t think this is a problem. Two-way interactions are perfectly coherent. “Man” – a society human beings, collectively constructs a moral law which in turn governs the behaviour of members of that society.
Not only that, but collectively we iteratively hone that moral law in the light of new insights and information.
This seems an excellent way to proceed, to me.
I’m not trying to be difficult, Brent, but I’m simply not seeing the problem – why should such a morality not be an “actual” morality?
Over the past three or so years I’ve become fascinated with the idea of normativity, or “ought-ness”, of which there are many kinds, moral norms being one of them.
For those of us of a humanistic and/or secularist bent, the question of how to account for norms is particularly difficult. But it didn’t be, because the correct solution (in my view) was developed in the early 19th-century by the German philosopher Georg Hegel, and his solution has been clarified and elaborated upon by many philosophers since.
The basic idea is that the bindingness of norms consists in that we bind each other, we take each other to be accountable, and conceive of ourselves as accountable to others. We acknowledge that we are accountable to others, and acknowledge others as accountable to us. So we take ourselves as committed to a family or system of norms, all things being equal, and regard others as likewise so committed, all things being equal.
(One corollary of this approach is that it makes moral norms much like norms of politeness, etiquette, and the like — where “that’s wrong!” is a much more intense form of “that’s rude!” — though, as with “that’s rude!”, “that’s wrong!” has both a cognitive and affective element. I am not arguing for noncognitivism!)
But, one might ask, how could this whole system of intersubjective recognition, mutual commitment to shared norms, be grounded or supported? How we deal with that question depends on how it is interpreted.
For, on the one hand, education is key: the norms to which we actively bind others in our adulthood are, almost always, the norms by which we were bound as children. Children, esp. very young children, are norm-less beings — they are ‘purely natural’, not yet enculturated. All their cognitive software is factory-installed. So we become beings that conceptualize ourselves as governed by norms by being subjected to government by norms by those who raise us. And, eventually, as we mature, we take an increasingly active role in modifying those norms, both through reflection and experience.
In another sense, however, there is nothing that grounds the norms — and the very need for one betrays a deep illusion. For the norms are the grounds for determining correct and incorrect behavior. And if the norms are the grounds, then the grounds do not need to be grounded in anything other than themselves. The need for a ground for the grounds is analogous to someone to says, “how do I know that that’s a sign unless there’s another sign telling me that that’s a sign?”
(There is, of course, the evolutionary question, of how norm-governed beings evolved from beings that are merely creatures of habit, but I’ll leave that aside for now.)
Lizzie,
It is indeed different; very different. If it is constructed by society it can be changed by society. The whole idea of morality is a law, or code, or system which we are supposed to adhere to. It makes little sense to say we must adhere to a code that we have, ourselves, made.
You said:
Which makes it obvious that you don’t really condemn rape. “It’s okay for some societies, but not most.” Wha . . . !?
And incidentally, this is the reason I initially became frustrated with you and decided to stop dialogging with you: You hold a very different idea of morality itself from me, knowingly, but didn’t point that out.
If you don’t put words in people’s mouths, you will have more chance of understanding them. Lizzie doesn’t say it is okay with her, she is reporting a fact.
In the Bible, you will find that rape is condoned under certain circumstances. Women as spoils of war, for example.
On what basis do you condemn rape?
Theistic morality systems purport to simply replace man with god as the source of moral pronouncements. Unfortunately relegating morality to god’s opinion, is still just someone’s opinion of course. The theist likes to argue that man-made morality can change and it’s really objective. I fail to see how morality being relegated to the opinion of god is any different. It’s still just opinion and subject to change. The theist will likely respond that god doesn’t change his mind, but how does the theist know this? He doesn’t, he blindly believes it. I’m sorry, but pronouncements of faith aren’t particularly consoling when searching for what kind of moral system we should implement.
What is worse, nobody can tell us with objective certainty what god’s morality really is, it still has to go through mere men’s interpretations (and there is plenty of disagreement on that within theism, even within same-brand theism. Christians disagree wildly on everything from condoms and the death-penalty to abortion). So whatever “solution” the theist thinks he offers, he doesn’t really have in the end, because even if morality was invented by god, it still suffers from the problem that men has to open old books copied and translated several times and interpret the words. And again, different translators, linguists, theologians and so an all disagree wildly on many different things.
What does it then matter that the theist thinks there’s an in principle “objective, god-given” morality out there, if human beings can’t seem to agree on what it is, despite having had several millenia to find out? What solution does the theist really then have, when it still suffers form all these demonstrably insurmountable problems? None at all.
The theist also complains that “man made” morality changes over time, but again so does theistic morality too. The common example is that slavery used to be condoned by theists, and it still is in the bible, but now it’s almost universally rejected. So, many theists even reject the morality of their own holy books! Christians eat shellfish and wear mixed-fabic clothing, etc. etc.
It seems to me it all boils down to the theists fear that, because these systems are “man made”, then they’re imperfect and can’t be trusted because one day, the idea goes, because cultures and sentiments change with time, sometime in a not too distant future, we might all start agreeing that it’s okay to rape, steal and murder each other, and since that’s of course a horrible idea, we should fear this a lot, so we better start thinking god exists and abide by some random men’s interpretations of what they think god wants us to do.
So in this sense, the “objective morality”-argument then serves as a fallacious appeal to fear and consequences. It’s supposed make us think god-belief is superior to secular morality, when it is clear it doesn’t solve any of the problems it purports to.
All these concerns are of course real and practical concerns that fundamentally undermine the practicality of the theistic solution to morality, and my point is that despite the idea of an unalterable and eternal, “objetive” moral system, theists unfortunately can’t get beyond the fact that we’re still just human, leaving us with the same set of problems as always. What IS god’s moral law and how do we know? Men interpreting the words written down in old books is supposedly the solution. Ridiculous.
All this is of course before we really start analyzing the basis for theistic morality in the first place. God is the good guy, god is good the theist says. The god of the bible is goodness itself. How do they know this? How does the theist actually know that god IS the good guy? How does the theist know that god’s moral commands are good commands? The obvious answer is that they don’t know this, and have to evaluate the god of the bible(or preferred holy book) according to their own, man-made, moral concepts, in order to determine whether they’re good or not. Which means what’s in the end assumed to be objective moral good was really just a man-made moral system to begin with. Hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad.
Regardless, secular and humanistic morality is superior to theistic morality, exactly because instead of denying it, instead of denying our basic biology and nature, it takes account of it and incorporates it:
Matt Dillahunty on the superiority of secular morality:
Richard Carrier on “What exactly is objective morality?”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4498
I think this is conservatism, more than religion.
1: Morality is absolute;
2: I know what is that absolute morality;
3: If people behaved differently 100 years ago, then they were immoral.
4: Morality itself is fixed, absolute and unchanging. But people in the past did not always understand it.
At least, that’s how the conservative view of morality looks to me.
On the basis that God doesn’t take advantage of people for His own pleasure, so much less do I have an excuse to. And the benefit here is, obviously, that even if the society which I live in does allow rape, I still won’t take part in it.
And kindly notice, I wasn’t putting words in her mouth at all. I know and acknowledge that she doesn’t personally condone rape. But, in a society where rape isn’t an immoral act, she has no recourse to condemn their action. She can only say, “Well, that’s just acceptable to them”, while the victims live with the ordeal.
How do you know this?
This will not work. Lizzie, you said you believe in a binding morality. How can you have a binding morality if it isn’t objective? How can it be binding if it can be changed by those who are supposed to be bound by it?
A man who holds the key to his own cell is not really imprisoned.
Interestingly perhaps, because the world has gone ape-shit mad.
I don’t see why Lizzie (or, for that matter, myself) can’t say, “although such-and-such society condones rape under such-and-such conditions, they ought not to condone it at all” and also say, “the ought-claims that constitute a social/political/cultural order are binding by virtue of intersubjective recognition, mutual acknowledgement, and the the like”.
More precisely, someone who takes the second view — which is a view about what norms are — has every reason to also take a view about which particular norms ought to be upheld. By condemning rape in any society whatever, what we are implicitly doing — according to the Hegelian story I’m pushing — is treating members of that society as if they were members of our own. But that’s just a way of taking them seriously as moral agents.
On the one hand, there is something deeply paternalistic and condescending, of the “oh, boys will be boys” mentality, when we acquiesce to cultural differences and refuse to condemn what we regard as immoral behavior. On the other hand, it is just as condescending and paternalistic for us to resort to coercion in order to bring their ideas about moral and immoral behavior into conformity with ours.
The only way to effect moral reform in a way that is itself morally right is through persuasion, argument, and dialogue — exactly as how we treat each other as members of the same moral community, is how we should strive to treat everyone. And in the course of doing so, our own ideas about morality will be put into question as well.
What is omitted from this conception of morality is what social conservatives usually want — an unchanging , absolute, and inexplicably given standard. What is omitted — or transcended, I would say — is what Dewey called “the Quest for Certainty” or what Nietzsche called “the faith in absolute values.” But it would be an error, to put it extremely mildly, to conflate the social conservative conception of morality or normativity with those concepts themselves.
(But perhaps that’s just what it is to be dogmatic — to conflate one’s own conceptions with the concepts, and to not see the space for alternative conceptions of the same concepts.)
I’m sorry but I don’t see how this answers my question.
Even if you’re right and the world has gone ape shit mad (I disagree, but that’s a digression), it does not logically follow from the world having gone mad that you personally know god doesn’t take advantage of people for his own please.
So, again, how do you know this?
In other words, if God were interested only in using people for His own pleasure, even at their own discomfort, then presumably He would force everyone to live perfectly consistently with His will, and not allow sin to be conducted at all.
Unresponsive. If your claim is correct, maybe that’s God taking advantage of people for His own pleasure. How do you know that “God doesn’t take advantage of people for His own pleasure”?
How does that follow? Lay out the syllogism, please.
Would it also be an error to do so with the social liberal conception?
JonF,
I honestly don’t know how to make it more clear.
Yes, it can be changed by society. But you keep failing to distinguish between “we” as a collective and “we” as an individual. Society, collectively, constructs a code of morality – a set of principles that govern how members of that society are expected to behave. This affects the way in which children are reared, and what happens when an individual fails to adhere to that morality, for example social disapproval, or judicial punishment. That makes perfectly good sense to me.
If an individual could construct a “morality” based on individual whim, that would, indeed, not be a morality-as-we-know it, because, by definition, it would place no constraints on the individual’s autonomy – the “oughtness” would be undone.
But if a society constructs a morality then the constraints are indeed constraints, and constrain not “society” but the members of it. And, in a democracy those members also directly contribute to the legally binding aspects of the moral code, while more informally, through communication with each other, members contribute to the morally binding aspects. This is reflected in our changing attitudes to slavery, for instance, or indeed rape, which until recently, was regarded as not-rape if it occurred within marriage.
No, I did not. I said most societies condemned rape. That is not the same thing as saying “it’s ok for some societies”. It’s simply an observation that, unfortunately, in some societies, rape is not considered a moral no-no. These include theistic societies. Indeed the Old Testament appears to report Yahweh-ordered rape.
Well, it can be frustrating when people are coming from very different assumptions regarding the content of the discussion.
But I think we can agree, can we not, that “morality” is the domain of what we ought to do?
If so, then we have at least a little bit of common ground!
I don’t see how this follows. I don’t even see why we should believe that, even if god took advantage of people for his own pleasure, that he would do that to everyone and do it all the time. It seems just as likely to me that a god would do it occasionally only to some people. You keep assuming all sorts of weird stuff I don’t see any reason to assume, starting with the assumption that god doesn’t tage advantage of people for his own pleasure.
How do you know all these things?
How do christians, or any theist, know that their god is good? I’d like answers from theists.
“On the basis that God doesn’t take advantage of people for His own pleasure,….”
Are you a Christian? Do you believe in the Christian scriptures? If so, I refer you to the book of Job.
It’s the key question.
Some theists define their God as good, and regard as from God anything they deem to be good.
Others define what is good as what God commands, but do not say how they know what God demands.
Still others define their God as good, regard what they consider good to be from God, but still hold that it can only be “really” good if it is from God, because of reasons.
Of course, but just to be 100% clear, that’s not what I’ve done.
I’ve it perfectly clear that, on my view, the Hegelian-pragmatist conception is an alternative to the absolutist conception, and I think it’s a better conception, but I’m not denying that absolutists have a conception of morality as well. Whereas absolutists tend to deny that what pragmatists conceptualize as morality really counts as morality at all.
Here I’m taking the rather audacious step of equivocating between “morality” and “objective morality,” because I think that “subjective morality”, like “subjective truth,” is simply incoherent — as “round square” is incoherent. The very concept of morality implies the concept of correctness (or incorrectness), and correctness cannot be subjective, because — here’s one way of putting it — if the only standard against which my thoughts are measured is itself just another thought, then there’s no standard at all. The same point holds for the notion of truth — the very concept of truth entails the concept of error, but if it all collapses back into my own mental states, then there’s no possibility of error-detection or correction. Kairosfocus talks as if I’m oblivious to this point, but in fact I accepted it when I began reading Donald Davidson’s epistemology in 2005.
So, that said, the pragmatist is offering a different conception of objectivity — for both epistemic norms (what one ought to believe) and ethical norms (what one ought to do). The key difference between science and ethics, as I see it, lies in the regulative ideal that drives the process forward. In science, the regulative ideal — that towards which we strive and continually fall short but hopefully, approach asymptotically over the course of history — is a model of the history of the universe and all its parts, including us as a part of that universe. In ethics, the regulative ideal is a universalized agape or caritas — or, as Richard Rorty once put it, “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”
We apparently have more in common than just that. We also agree on morality not really being morality if it is too whimsy. I say that throwing the “burden” of creating morality on society is just that.
For one, society is not so easily defined, as you should know. Not that my case rests only here, but what happens when I say, or anyone, “I am declaring my own society”? And, who says I ought to listen to society? What right does society have to make me adhere to its stupid rules?
Unfortunate based on what!? It is either okay in their society or it isn’t. Which is it?
I think this is an awesome question and would love to answer it. However, I think I would like to take some time and write up a full post on it, which would take some time (days or even a week as I’m really busy at the moment).
Kantian Naturalist,
Kantian, I hope I can reply more fully to you later. You’ve posted a lot and I’m trying to digest it before I really engage you. I appreciate your thoughts so far.
The big problem with this even as a subject is that it reverses the order of evidence. It’s pretty much the usual complaint about science, that it doesn’t support the religious claims that are “absolutely true.” Evolution doesn’t support religious morality claims, therefore it is wrong–this is a typical creationist “argument.”
Well, where’s the evidence for absolute morality? There is none, while there is plenty of evidence that morality exists in human societies.
Basically, what matters here is evidence, and the religious claim falls on lack of evidence here, too.
Glen Davidson
I will give you OP permissions, Brent. btw, although I think it is still technically possible for OP writers to moderate (delete/edit) comments to their own posts, we have a rule against it on this site – just to let you know! I’m hoping someone will come up with a hack that makes it not possible, but right now I think it still is.
Look forward your post.
Cheers
Lizzie
Lizzie, I’d like to know what you make of my posts in this thread, if it’s not too much trouble.
That is of course a reasonable sentiment. I will be looking forward to your answer.
I’m out for an extended time, probably, just to let you all know. And, I live in Japan, so it can make things funny with my active net time being quite different from most.
Brent:
I love that you speculate that you, personally, (or anyone else) would be a selfish unsocial monster if you were not restrained by your idea of god ruing over you.
Society, what society, you ask? It’s as if you were raised by alligators and have never noticed that you are a social mammal. Yes, it’s true, I would not trust an alligator to be a moral member of human society without a holy book to rule it. But what makes you think that you’re an alligator at heart?
That’s so typical of christians – I’ve never heard it from a believer in another religion although I suppose other cults might have the same problem – they are so indoctrinated into the idea that a persons are depraved that they literally cannot imagine society behaving decently without the dictation of god.
Kantian Naturalist,
KN – I disagree. I would be interested in your comments on this piece I wrote on the subject because it keeps coming up.
Very telling. You’re sure but you can’t lay out the logical steps. IOW you made it up.
I’m holding my breath.
oops, my reply above was supposed to be to one of Brent’s comments further upthread …
since I’m “here”, let me add that I agree with this:
Aye, but the crux is – as always – getting a theist to engage with the very concept of “evidence” instead of with the voice in their head.
God says:
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
and Brent nods xis head.
Mark Frank,
There could just be a problem on my end, but the link isn’t working for me.
He botched the link. The “A” tags are there, but the URL is missing.
I think this is partly a disagreement over the meanings of “subjective” and “objective”.
I agree that a purely subjective morality makes no sense. However, a culturally relative morality seems to be what we have and about the best that is possible.
Some people want to consider “culturally relative” as a special case of “objective”, while others want to take it to be a special case of “subjective”.
Awesome. This is what I tried in vain to express clearly to WJM a while ago – why would there be a need to justify one’s moral system in the first place? One needs to be able to justify one’s actions (or sometimes inactions), using one’s moral system. If that can be done, you are doing the right thing, if not, you are doing the wrong thing. Simples.
Of course it is perfectly possible that different people come to different conclusions about right and wrong, still being consistent with their own moral systems. In such cases conflict may ensue. I maintain that there is no independent arbiter to judge who is in the right and who is in the wrong in such cases. We all judge each other and ourselves by our own standards and nothing but our own standards (which obviously in most cases are the standards of the family/group/society we exist in).
We are all players in this game and the puppet master has long vanished, if he ever existed.
fG
Kantian Naturalist,
Sorry – I will try again without bothering with the anchor tag.
http://www.markfrank.me.uk/home/writing/Subjective%20need%20not%20mean%20trivial.doc?attredirects=0&d=1
Hotshoe – I think it’s significant that he chose a prison analogy to illustrate what happens when society creates its own morality.
I like this, KN. Still trying to digest the rest 🙂
Mark Frank,
Mark, I like this very much, because it does help clarify the underlying issues.
Firstly, I completely agree that judgments which rely on affective responses need not be, and often are not, trivial — they can be very important, and a lot can follow from them.
Secondly, the example you gave — of the two producers trying to decide whether or not a director is worth investing in — is an aesthetic judgment. Now, you’re right that aesthetic judgments are non-trivial and ‘subjective’, insofar as arriving at the same judgment relies on having similar affective responses. Furthermore, similarity in affective responses is affected by argument — we’ve all, I presume, had the experience of re-evaluating our preferences about some music, movie, book, painting etc as a result of discussing it with other people, esp. if the conversant is more knowledgeable.
Thirdly, however, I’m not sure how far I would agree with you. The account given here works as an account of moral judgment at the expense of making ‘agreement in moral judgments’ akin to ‘agreement in aesthetic judgments’ — recognizing, of course, that both aesthetic and moral judgments have both an affective and conceptual element — I still am not entirely comfortable with reducing the distance between the aesthetic and the moral.
I would still want to say here that there are ‘matters of fact’ that make some moral judgments better than others — namely, whether the moral judgment belongs to a family of moral judgments and moral practices that tend to promote human flourishing. I don’t see anything comparable to that in the case of aesthetic judgments.
This may have some partial relevance.
It turns out that empathy is not confined to primates.
It may turn out that many social animals feel empathy; at least in situations in which the negotiation of cooperation and collective behavior is necessarily for survival.
As follow-on to my last comment, I wonder if moral behavior requires the individuals of a species to have a concept of self.
I would think that not only a concept of self, but a concept of future consequences for behavior. I would think that these are minimum cognitive abilities that are needed for the emergence of a “golden rule” among members of a species.
These may be overlain by historical fears and grudges; but once individuals as a group gain the concept of a harmonious society, acts such as rape intrude on notions of self. If the individual recognizes that it is bad for the self, the ability to imagine a future and the projection of one’s feelings onto others may lead to the conclusion that it is bad for “other selves” as well.
The reason this gets mixed up with religion is historical. Humans actually manufactured religions to coerce uniform behavior in emerging city populations. If undesirable acts can be punished by all-seeing deities even when the offender is out of reach of the judgments of humans, the rules can be more effectively enforced.