Ethics and Morality

As a rebuttal to my previous comment, my friend endorsed an atheist response to the Joel Marks's Ex-Moralist article.  In his blog Why Evolution is True, the ecologist Jerry Coyle argues that Marks did not truly give up morality.  Instead he switched to a utilitarian morality and merely called it something different.  I don't agree.  In the following reply, I suggest that Marks gave up on morality because his atheist philosophy demanded it.

Sometimes it helps for me to start at the beginning.  What is the purpose of defining morality?  Why go through the trouble?  It seems to me that morality is important because there are times when we simply do not know the right action to take.  Sometimes we must rely upon something outside ourselves to tell us what to do.  Our internal compass -- our instinct, our heart, or our head -- fails us.  Morality tells us what to do at these times.  Yet there is also ethics, and both ethics and morality instruct us how to act.

Although both are valuable, I see ethics and morality as distinct.  What separates them is that ethics change and are debated while morals are eternal.  We cannot deny that each of us has times when we disobey even our own rules.  We rationalize them away or we try to forget them.  The moral rules are those which we can never deny or rationalize into nonexistence.  We must accept them.  Morality becomes most needed precisely at the moment one wishes to ignore it.  To make this point clear, consider being accused of something "unethical" versus "immoral".  The latter has a feeling of inviolable transgression that the former lacks.  Or to put it more succinctly: ethics suggests, morality compels. 

I make this distinction because I do not think Prof. Coyne or Sam Harris, whom Coyne mentions, is talking about morality.  They are talking about ethics.  Consider this section from Coyne's post: 

"[Prof. Marks] may not call [vegetarianism] the 'right' thing to do, but it’s what he sees as a way to increase well being.  And that’s exactly what Sam Harris sees as 'objective' morality." 

To be fair, I have not read Harris, and neither Coyne nor Marks wrote in order to define a complete system of ethics, but consider what is here.  They propose that we should act in ways that increase well-being.  That sounds good, but it is easily rationalized away.  If I am selfish and place a higher weight upon my own happiness, then I am justified to act selfishly because my well-being is most important.  Yet we also feel that would be wrong.  (I can give personal testimony to this sin.)  Hence the idea -- that we should act to increase well-being -- is an idea in ethics.  To motivate, it requires some external moral standard that tells us we should not value ourselves so highly. 

I don't think Coyne would be satisfied with that argument.  He would say, I think, that he possess an innate morality which tells him to act humbly.  This morality is guided by the "head" and the "heart". 

"[Prof. Marks's] 'head' is his secular and rational consideration of what consequences actions can bring.  If some consequences are more desirable than others, as in factory farming, that’s not much different from morality.

"His 'heart' is his evolved feelings about the right thing to do.  That is the part of our morality instilled in our ancestors by natural selection." 

He supposes morality is a combination of choosing what is more desirable rationally and judging his choices based on his internal feelings, which have emerged from evolution through natural selection.  So for him, the ultimate external moral standard is based in the natural process of adaptation.  It changes and evolves, and hence it is not truly objective.  (Notice objective becomes "objective" in the quote above.)  Dawkins calls this the "changing moral zeitgeist" in The God Delusion.  But there are problems with such a moral standard. 

Morality is not an abstract idea that we discuss to make us feel better about our actions.  It gives us a basis for truly judging our actions and the actions of others.  Ideally, it should give us a standard by which we construct our laws.  And in this latter way, morality becomes action.  We ruin people's lives by throwing them in jail (or worse) for not conforming to the moral zeitgeist.  We feel we are justified in administering this discipline because they have offended a morality that not only applies to us, but to them as well.  For example, we would all agree that thieves and murderers  are immoral and should be punished. 

And so here is the problem: if we suppose that morality evolves, then how can we justify punishment of immoral acts?  How do we guarantee these wrong actions are not, in fact, just the next step in the evolving moral zeitgeist?  How do we avoid punishing the more evolved actions outside our current morality?  Given the unreliability of our individual moral sense, as I mentioned above, we cannot depend on it.  Toward an answer Dawkins proposes that "the zeitgeist may […] move in a generally progressive direction, but […] it is a sawtooth not a smooth improvement" (p. 308, The God Delusion).  But this is not satisfying: why is the zeitgeist not generally regressive instead? 

Fundamental to Dawkins's argument is that today we know and understand more than our ancestors -- we have discovered more truth.  Therefore we are more likely to construct a proper understanding of right and wrong.  But we cannot know this with certainty.  We can only trust that the zeitgeist is guided by an invisible hand.  Dawkins, Harris, and Coyne would say, circularly, that this is the hand of evolution.  But if evolution is the author of our changing moral sense, we cannot then use our moral sense to judge what truth evolution has given us.  Hence an inner, evolved sense of right and wrong can never provide an objective standard of morality. 

I think in his "anti-epiphany", Prof. Marks peers behind the curtain of the morality argued by Dawkins and Harris and sees the circularity.  The invisible hand disappeared.  He sees no basis for compelling anyone to act in a right way, because "right" doesn't have a real meaning.  Moreover, he has no alternative.  There is no atheistic argument for morality that is not fundamentally circular in the above way.  And that is why he no longer believes in morals.  He can only suggest an ethics from the basis of his internal compass.  (At least, then, he still has a job.) 

But there is an alternative solution that embraces the invisible hand, the teleology, of our moral development.  This solution acknowledges moral guidance as one of the divine attributes, because only God can satisfy our quest for an objective morality.  And it does not require us to redefine words with perfectly good definitions.  But that is for another post.

A path toward moral relativism

Yesterday, just before going to bed, I ran across this essay by ethicist Joel Marks on the New York Times called "Confessions of an Ex-Moralist".  I found it to be a refreshing look at the moral implications of atheism, and I commented on Facebook that it was nice to read a "serious" atheist.  A friend took exception to my comment and wrote:

What exactly do you find 'serious' about this? If anything, I find it almost exactly not serious. This guy sounds like an atheist who at some level wishes he just could be a believer and make all the tricky stuff go away. I think teh kidz call this a faithiest.

I wrote a reply in which I tried to express the logical reasons of this particular atheist's choice of moral relativism and why it was important to understand it.

I doubt that I am unique here, but it often feels as if morals are real, i.e., that there is an objective right and wrong.  When someone has wronged me, it feels as though his action was not just wrong for me but for him as well.  And I would like to think that, at times, I am truly justified in my anger toward someone else.  So if I feel so strongly about a moral reality, then why?

One answer, I suppose, is that morals do not exist as we would feel they should.  Instead of morals, the argument goes, each of us merely has preferences.  Morals themselves are an illusion or, at best, are an emergent property formed out of the complex interactions of our subjective preferences.  Either way, morals do not have real authority.

Regardless of whether that particular argument is true, Prof. Marks is convinced that his atheism demands that it is true.  He explains why here:

"A friend had been explaining to me the nature of her belief in God. At one point she likened divinity to the beauty of a sunset: the quality lay not in the sunset but in her relation to the sunset […] But then it hit me: is not morality like this God? […] Does it not make far more sense to suppose that all of these phenomena arise in my breast, that they are the responses of a particular sensibility to otherwise valueless events and entities?"

As a humanist, he finds truth in the inward feeling of beauty one sees in a sunset (what his friend calls God).  But it is the experience between man and sunset that he finds transcendent, not the sunset itself.  As an atheist, he knows this is not really God, but like his friend he did "adamantly affirm the objectivity of right and wrong".  Yet at his "anti-epiphany", he realizes that there is a duality between his friend's belief in God and his belief in morals.  As man is to sunset, man is also to lie.  He supposes that he should be as amoral as he is atheist.  And in that case, morals do not exist any more than God does.

What is so "serious" about this atheist is that once he realizes that his philosophy demands that he give up an important aspect of his life -- morality is important to an ethicist -- he does so without question.  Moreover, I find it commendable that he focuses on the questions of atheist morality instead of the more worn out question of whether atheists are moral.  I find the notion of a relative morality absolutely fascinating because it raises a huge list of questions.  Prof. Marks covers some in his essay: Are any acts not permissible?  How does one deal with disagreement?  How does one escape moral nihilism?  What are the societial implications of such a philosophy?  How can we rely on an instinctual morality when it is so unreliable?  Each of these is a hard question, and hence I don't agree that it as an easy way out.

Whether evolution via natural selection is a counter-example to Thomas's Fifth Way

Thomas Aquinas famously shows that the existence of God may be shown through five ways.  The fifth way is sometimes called the teleological argument or the argument from design.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Thomas begins with the rational principle that all things that act toward an end must have been designed to act toward this end.  Hence, if we find that there are ends, that agents act "as to obtain the best result", then we must agree that these agents' actions had a designer.  Thomas finds such agents in nature, agents that lack intelligence yet act in ways that are obviously "aimed" as, famously, "the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer".  Here Thomas is supposing these agents are programmed to act, they do not decide for themselves, e.g., birds fly south due to their DNA, not out of free choice.


Thomas focuses on nature and so his argument has lost some influence among modern man, who would more easily (and scientifically) attribute the ends of nature to natural selection and evolution.  To stay with the analogy, even a dumb archer will guide an arrow given enough time and motivation.  For example, Richard Dawkins argues that

Thanks to Darwin, it is no longer true to say that nothing we know looks designed unless it is designed.  Evolution by natural selection produces an excellent simulacrum of design, mounting prodigious heights of complexity and elegance.  And among these eminences of pseudo-design are nervous systems which -- among their more modest accomplishments -- manifest goal-seeking behavior that, even in a tiny insect, resembles a sophisticated heat-seeking missile more than a simple arrow on target (p. 103, God Delusion).

Evolution is undoubtedly true, and natural selection is the most likely scientific explanation for the way in which we ended up with complex organs like nervous systems.  But I doubt that evolution by natural selection is a valid counter-example to Thomas's fifth way.  Such arguments miss the deeper philosophical point contained within Thomas's argument.


Thomas remarks that at least some natural, unintelligent agents act to obtain the best result.  They do not end up acting at random (fortuitously), but in a way that best suits them.  It is the notion of best that implies a designer, even given evolution as the method of achieving that result.  For example, a dumb archer may eventually be trained to aim at a target, but it is a rational impossibility that a dumb archer chooses his target.  He shoots where he is told.  His notions of best are external, decided by a more able mind.  So if we wish to argue against Thomas's divinely driven nature, we cannot point toward evolution because it does not provide a definition of best.  It does not aim the arrow of nature, it merely propels it.  


To make this point clear, consider what one may say is the best human organ, the brain.  In his lecture notes on Aquinas, Peter Kreeft writes

I think Aquinas would say that evolution is an excellent example of cosmic design, evidence for God. He’d say the arrow of evolution flies to the target of human brains only because it’s guided by the intelligence of a divine archer. Aquinas would not be among the anti-Darwinian fundamentalists today. I think if he saw the atheist bumper sticker of the Christian fish with the word Darwin in it, he would not understand the intended irony, he would interpret it as an argument for theism (p. 20, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas). 

Using Dawkins's words, that there are bodily "eminences", we actually argue for God's existence. If we suppose that the action of our grey matter is the pinnacle of evolution, then we must concede to Aquinas that there is a designer, aiming the arrow of evolution toward human intelligence.  (God is the intelligence designer not the Intelligent Designer.)


A proper counter-example could be formed if it could be proven that there is no notion of best.  Instead, there are just flavors and variations, each equally valid.  So Thomas's archer may hit the bullseye, or he may avoid it, but we cannot rationally suppose one target is better than another.  This is a post-modern critique of Thomas.  But such an argument is not only fatal to Thomas's fifth way, but fatal to science as well.  Science needs best too, because it tells us truths about the physical world; it needs a best hypothesis.  Without best, the flat Earth and the round Earth become equals, and science would become a glorified database of physical occurrences.


This is why science is indebted to Aquinas and his fifth way.  He justifies the otherwise arrogant claim of scientific truth by telling us why we have intelligence: because our minds, made in the image of God's omnipotence, are ordered toward reason.  And in that humble way, we may find truth.

Skeptics and Believers: Lecture 1 - Religion and Modernity

The material for this course begins at the enlightenment, or the scientific revolution, and it examines what religious and nonreligious thinkers have thought from then to the present time.  The great question that is posed is, "Can religion be modern?"  The first lecture gives an overview of Prof. Robert's attempt to answer to that question.

Prof. Roberts defines Modernity in its more philosophical sense.  The movement of Modernity is toward a greater substitution of the "authority of reason" for the Medieval "authority of faith".  He identifies Modernity with ideas of progress and the universality of reason.  Modernity innately supposes that man will be unified under reason and that, somehow, mankind itself is on a slow journey to this unification.  At the same time, man does not need God or religion to achieve this final goal, because every step is built with the human intellect ordered by reason.  By this definition, Modernity is not so much atheist as it is agnostic.  The Modern god is an outside observer.

With that definition of Modernity, it seems impossible that religion can be modern.  To be religious supposes that God is both necessary and essential for life.  So while various religions may absorb features of Modernity, they can never truly be modern.  This is only my prediction of Prof. Robert's conclusion, but I am very interested in what place he finds for religion in a Modern world.

After defining Modernity, Prof. Roberts gives an overview of the course.  He has chosen to explore the questions of religion and reason throughout time, focusing on what philosophers have thought.  We will hear from Descarte, Hume, Kierkegaard, Kant, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and others.  For this lecture, we are only given the standard nuggets of argument for which they are famous.  But he ends the lecture on a curious note.

At the end, he wants to describe the importance of philosophy.  (Afterall, what use is his lecture if we do not fully appreciate what philosophy is.)  He turns to Focault.  Philosophy, he says, is a practice of thought.  It is a testing of ideas.  This exploration of ideas, if it is deep enough, verges on the spiritual.  Philosophical inquiry, he says, is important because it allows us to change our ideas.  In fact, it impels us to change our ideas.

That definition sounds very appealing.  But if I did not know any better before I listened to these lectures, I would have put philosophy aside and forgotten about it.  Imagine if we said that the importance of science is that it is possible change our ideas about physical reality?  Imagine if we got upset because science dictated to us the nature of the world and felt oppressed by science because we could not form our own understanding of nature.  What good would science be?  But indeed it is that dictatorship that gives science its usefulness.  If science gives us truth, then we can only accept the reality it presents us, we cannot argue. Likewise, philosophy is only useful if it is a real source of truth.  It is important to be able to seek new ideas and change our understanding of the world, but only on the journey toward truth. If God exists, then positing his nonexistence is an ultimately useless exercise.  Freedom is useful only in the service of truth.  It is not an end unto itself.

So instead, if we are to continue further, we must suppose that philosophy is a exploration of the nature of reality every bit as concerned with truth as science.  With that, we can see how religion and reason are not so opposed to each other.  They are both an exploration and response to what is true and real.  Otherwise, they are pointless.