A Modest Proposal for Religion and Morality Terminology: Part 4 (Discovered vs Invented)

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4. Discovered vs Invented

Having reviewed the terminology to describe the positions that moral sentences are either are (or are not) capable of being true or false, I am now going to explore the philosophical territory under cognitivism. When cognitivists talk about the truth value of moral sentences, it is useful to distinguish between the source and nature of these sentences. Allow me to explain. 

Again, consider the following moral sentences.

• Do unto others what you would have them do to you.
• Plural marriage, involving one husband and multiple wives, is acceptable.
• It is the duty of parents to ensure that their daughters are 'circumcised,' i.e., have their clitoris removed.

By definition, if cognitivism is true, each of those sentences is either true or false. But what makes each of them true or false? Here are two indirect answers to that question.

• discovered: whatever it is that makes moral sentences true or false, it is something that "we" recognize and which is beyond "our" control.
• invented: a mind (or something like a mind) decides which moral sentences are true or false.

Each of these two options has two sub-options: one limited to humans and one which includes humans and any supernatural beings which might exist, such as gods and God.

• discovered by humans: whatever it is that makes moral sentences true or false, it is something that humans recognize and which is beyond humans' control.
• discovered by minds: whatever it is that makes moral sentences true or false, it is something that minds (or something like minds) recognize and which is beyond their control.
• invented by humans: humans decide which moral sentences true or false
• invented by minds: a mind (or something like a mind) decides which moral sentences are true or false.

The distinction between "discovered" and "invented" captures most, if not all, of what philosophers mean when they talk about the "objectivity" or "subjectivity" of "morality" in a purely ontological sense, i.e., what "exists" in reality.[1] But the discovered-vs.-invented distinction has a major advantage over the ontological objectivity-vs.-subjectivity distinction. Even among philosophers who define the terms "objective" and "subjective" in an ontological sense, there is disagreement about how to apply that distinction to God (and ethical theories in which God plays a major role). Some philosophers maintain that "discovered by humans" is a sufficient condition for ontological objectivity, while others insist that ontological objectivity means mind-independent and so "discovered by minds" (including God) is a necessary and sufficient condition for ontological objectivity. In contrast, the two distinctions -- discovered-vs.-invented by humans-vs.-minds -- bypasses that semantic swamp entirely and does so in a way easily understandable by everyone.

Notes

[1] In this sentence, replace "morality" with "social moral system or Socratic moral system."

A Modest Proposal for Religion and Morality Terminology: Part 3 (Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism)

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3. Defining "Truth-Apt" and "Not Truth-Apt"

In Part 2, I suggested that, in place of referring to "morality," it would be helpful instead to explicitly refer to the concept of morality the speaker has in mind. I identified the following two different concepts of morality.

• social moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable behavior towards other people
• Socratic moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable ways for living one's life, including situations which involve other people and situations which do not.

The "rules" of a moral system can be thought of as sentences which describe acceptable or unacceptable behavior.  Consider the following non-moral sentences.

• It is 60 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
• Ronald Regan was the 40th President of the United States of America.
• The earth is flat.

All of those sentences have truth-values, meaning that they are the kind of sentences which can be either true or false. We'll call sentences of this kind "truth-apt" or cognitive." Now consider the following sentences.

• Tomatoes: yuk!
• Boo on running a marathon!
• Professor: "For your next assignment, we are going to read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment."
  Class: (groans)

These sentences are "not truth-apt" or "non-cognitive." They are not the kind of sentences which can be either true or false. 

Now consider the following sentences about the moral status of various kinds of behavior.

• Do unto others what you would have them do to you.
• Plural marriage, involving one husband and multiple wives, is acceptable.
• It is the duty of parents to ensure that their daughters are 'circumcised,' i.e., have their clitoris removed.

Cognitivists believe that these sentences are truth-apt. Non-cognitivists, on the other hand, believe they are not truth-apt.

A Modest Proposal for Religion and Morality Terminology: Part 2

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2. Defining "Morality"

I will never forget the time, roughly twenty-five years ago, when I was talking to a fellow atheist about a moral argument for God's existence. I'll call this other atheist "John." According to John, the moral argument is silly because Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist, had refuted the idea that morality needs God in his book, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals.[1] I remember scratching my head when John said that. I thought to myself, "But that's not what Christians mean when they talk about morality depending on God." This was the first of countless conversations to come with many people, both theist and atheist, who had different ideas about what the word "morality" means.

In the introduction to his book, Morality and Self-Interest, philosopher Paul Bloomfield provides a helpful overview of the two major theoretical definitions of "morality" at play among philosophers. I want to quote Bloomfield at some length.

The first conception may be thought of as the social conception of "morality". It begins with the question of how one ought to behave toward others. Morality is seen as having a final authority over our lives and the interests of others play a necessary role in the decision procedures we ought to use. Where the interests of others are not at issue, morality does not come into play: there is no morality for an agent stranded alone on a desert island. Thus, on such a view, morality and justice, understood loosely to encompass all fair dealings between people, are often seen to have the same scope. Typically, on this conception, morality requires impartiality, such that agents must not see their own interests, or the interests of their families, communities, etc., as having any special standing whatsoever in the decision procedure that determines what ought to be done. Thus, we see Kantian deontology requiring consequentialism more generally, requiring strict impartiality in the evaluation of the outcomes of possible actions. On some accounts, the strict impartiality may be loosened somewhat by, for example, "agent-centered prerogatives," as discussed by Scheffler (1982), but this loosening must still be justified given standards according to which it would be acceptable for everyone to act in the same way; agents may, to some degree, favor themselves to avoid undue sacrifices that would be required by strict impartiality, but they may only do so according to rules that admit no exception.

The other conception of morality dates back to the ancient Greeks, and takes as its starting point the question, "How ought I to live?". It might fairly be called the "Socratic" conception of morality (see Plato's Gorgias, 500c; Republic, 344e). Answering this question will inevitably require one to consider how one will behave toward other people, but extends beyond that, to every significant aspect of a person's life, however private. Thus, someone stranded alone on a desert island may be faced with moral questions, given the possibility of living as well as possible in those trying circumstances. Like the social conception of morality, the Socratic conception of morality will have final authority over the agent's life, representing the agent's "rule of life". As such, the Socratic conception may be seen as formally egoistic, since one begins by aiming at living well, though it need not be substantially egoistic if one determines that one must treat others well in order to have a well-lived life. ... Given the Socratic conception of morality, however, and in contrast to the social conception, rabid, selfish egoism still represents a form of morality, however mistaken it may be.[2]

I have found Bloomfield's summary of these two conceptions of "morality" to be very helpful. Rather than trying to define "morality" per se, which (per Part 1) is sure to be ignored, I propose the following two terms.

• social moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable behavior towards other people
• Socratic moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable ways for living one's life, including situations which involve other people and situations which do not.

I do not claim these two terms represent all of the possible options for what other people might mean by the word "morality," but for my purposes they are enough.

Notes

[1] Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

[2] Paul Bloomfield, Morality and Self-Interest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), introduction. Italics are mine.

A Modest Proposal for Religion and Morality Terminology: Part 1

Source: PXFuel; License: Public Domain 

1. The Problem

Based on literally hundreds of conversations with people about topics related to religion and morality, I'm leaning in favor of the idea that semantics is a huge obstacle to successful conversation. Allow me to explain. Notice that conversations about religion and morality tend to use some subset of the following words.

• morality
• ethics
• normative
• prescriptive
• values
• obligations
• duties
• ought
• objective
• intersubjective
• subjective
• intrinsic
• extrinsic
• theism
• atheism
• naturalism
• materialism
• God
• Christianity
• material
• Platonism
• basis
• foundation
• realism
• anti-realism

Even among professional philosophers, there is no universally accepted definitions for any of the above words. To make matters even worse, discussions about religion and morality often use various combinations of the above words. Here are some examples.

• ethical nonnaturalism and ethical naturalism
• moral realism and moral anti-realism
• moral objectivism, intersubjectivism, and subjectivism
• ontological objectivity and epistemological objectivity
• objective morality and objective moral values
• intrinsic value vs. extrinsic value

If even professional philosophers do not agree on the definitions of the key terms in discussions about religion and morality, this would lead one to predict that nonphilosophers do not, either. This is exactly what one finds. Try discussing whether "morality needs God" on social media and you will quickly encounter people using different definitions for the same words. 

It is impossible to have meaningful communication, as opposed to the illusion of communication, if no one can agree on what they key terms in the discussion mean. So, how to address this?

In the past, I have tried stipulating definitions in conversations, but in my experience that hasn't worked very well. Inevitably, people forget or ignore the stipulated definitions, causing the discussion to revert back to the "illusion of communication" problem. For this reason, I'm starting to think we need to adopt a new set of words, ones without any baggage, in order to achieve real communication. What follows is my modest proposal to improve the possibility of real communication.