I’m a bit perplexed. Most people feel it justifiable to argue for ‘correct’ moral beliefs. I’m not even talking about the ambiguous sort of issues which we find in our society such as abortion and capitol punishment. I’m more concerned about what we usually consider unambiguous principles…like how we shouldn’t do this
. The reason I’m troubled is that moral objectivity is pretty much out and ……
This is what a naturalist may think:
Without a god to give us moral principles the best we can hope for are principles derived from natural laws. At least this is what I think most atheists and humanists mean when they say that we don’t need a god to have moral principles. One natural course would look sort of like this.
A lack of social cohesion decreases individual survival.
A decrease in individual survival is dysfunctional
Murder hurts social cohesion.
Therefore,
C)Murder is dysfunctional.
So we could in a round about way declare that murder is in some way a dysfunctional behavior, but we must remember that this is a derived belief which is only true in virtue of its premises being true. The only ‘value’ which can not be changed is the functionality of individual survival (which seems to be a natural enough assumption). But this just doesn’t give us what we want. Pretend that one day we come across a nice area of land with some great resources, the inhabitants are a bit odd and we don’t think cooperation with them will improve the survival of our community much. And since these locals are so ‘strange’, most of our community doesn’t experience all that much empathy for them. Since just getting rid of them seems to be the most cost effective way of maximizing our gain we just go ahead with that plan. Of course, the calculations may be wrong in any given situation (our group may be wrong about the cost and benefits of our actions for individual survival) but it is clear that in principle mass extermination is consistent with a moral code derived from nature…the mother is a cruel bitch after all.
Next comes the perplexing part. How can I construct (or find, for that matter) a moral code? If I’m just missing something about how we can form moral standards with some philosophical legitimacy…well then someone please show me. But I’m pretty confident that nothing like that will work. All I have to work with are psychological tendencies and emotional feedback patterns which have been formed through various (morally arbitrary) social and evolutionary pressures. This is why I’m not a nihilistic ass. I feel good when I perform certain actions and feel bad when I do something wrong (not even considering the fear of getting ‘caught’). But again, these are merely neurological facts (from an objective point of view) or aesthetic opinions (from our own point of view). Just as we can appreciate art which is pleasing to us so we can appreciate actions; but certainly it isn’t something to argue about…at least not in the same way which we argue about morality.
Or at least this is the version of morality which has dominated post-modern thought.
This is all very troubling for someone who wants to do what is right. How can I convince someone that killing monkeys is wrong if such an argument would be akin to me telling them how much I like Radiohead?