Conclusion 1: Suicide is objectively moral
Conclusion 2: Suicide is objectively immoral
The conclusions obviously contradict each other and therefore must be false. Therefore one or more of the premises must also be false. Unfortunately we have no way in which to prove the truth or falsity of the second or third premise, but according to the first premise one of them must be false. If however the claim to objectivity in the first premise is wrong, the contradiction does no longer hold as shown below.
Premise 1 Morality is subjective
Premise 2 Culture X sees suicide as immoral
Premise 3 Culture Y sees suicide as moral
Conclusion 1: Suicide is moral from culture X’s point of view
Conclusion 2: Suicide is immoral from culture Y’s point of view
The reason why morality appears as objective is because so many people share the same or similar views. This could be due to many factors such as similarities in human psychology. Therefore people’s moralities seem to coincide but are actually due to coincidence and are inter-subjective. Mackie believes that it is due to human psychology that we objectify our values for practical purposes which he calls patterns of objectification. Another reason why we tend to objectify morality is due to the external pressures put on us by society. For example, if we were to steal something from someone and were caught we may be taken to court and condemned. Some may argue that this does not prove the subjectivity of morality, and that it requires a certain amount of faith or learning to understand the truth of morality. Someone who believes that suicide is immoral may simply say that the differing view is false and based on ignorance.
For morality to be objective, it would require either the existence of God, or a realm in which these moral entities would reside. Plato had a theory that everything existed in its perfect form in some sort of spirit like realm. Therefore, according to Plato, concepts which make up reality such as honesty and kindness would exist objectively in some kind of realm. At his time, Plato believed that one could arrive at knowledge of these forms through training and experience. However, the idea of this metaphysical realm has not been able to be proven by any rational and sound argument and seems counterintuitive, although this does not prove it wrong; it lends it no strength of conviction either. This idea of some moral entity existing, separately from the physical world as we know it is similar to the problem encountered in Dualism, specifically the problem of mind and body interaction. How can two completely separate entities, each in their own reality have a causal connection? There is also an epistemological problem here, regardless of whether the realm of morality interacts with the realm of nature, how do we gain knowledge of this moral realm in the first place as we seem to gain no knowledge of it from our five senses?
To begin with the epistemological problem, some might argue that we arrive at knowledge of the objective nature of morality through divine revelation or intervention, for example, the Ten Commandments which were supposedly given to Moses by God. If this were true it would raise some serious questions concerning Mackie’s claim that it is only our culture which shapes our morality. The Ten Commandments would have formed many of the foundations for western civilisation. Unfortunately we can not prove whether Moses actually existed, and some may say that the Ten Commandments were created by a society to instil obedience. Bearing in mind that Mackie was born in the 20th Century in Australia, a time and culture biased towards empirical methods where religion and mysticism had and still have little or no place. I think that his observations have too little scope to make this claim. Similarly, the teachings of Buddha had a great impact on people’s lives and Asian culture which can still be seen today. For example, strict Buddhists value all life and refrain from harming any living being, which is why there are so many stray dogs in countries such as Thailand. Even in The West, some people after encountering his teachings have radically changed their way of life by devoting their life to mastering their mind so that they to can witness these truths themselves. The obvious counter argument here is that Buddha’s teachings were subjective and caused by his mind due to social conditioning. However their have been successive human beings who have managed to arrive at the same truths by following these teachings. Briefly, to discover the nature of reality it is said that one has to detach oneself from ones senses and previous conceptions and ideas in order to arrive into a state of pure awareness, untainted by our false sense of self. It is apparently this which obscures our ability to “see” clearly, which is also the cause of all our misconceptions and misunderstandings. It is claimed that once we do this we see things for what they are. This would help to explain the problem of interaction between these seemingly separate realms. As the human mind is still far from being understood it seems quite plausible that it may be the connection which allows an interaction to take place. This is similar to the idea of moral intuitionism, that there are self evident moral truths. The fact that even many moral intuitionists disagree widely about what is self evident may be because one first has to undergo extensive training of the mind in order to perceive them clearly. As far as I know, all people who have devoted their life to the practice of mental cultivation or meditation in order to see the objective truths concerning reality and morality have ended up with the same beliefs. For example, Buddhists in Tibet, India, Thailand and Japan all share the principle of non-violence and reincarnation. Unfortunately we cannot formulate an argument to prove these concepts as they lie beyond language and thought, the only way in which to test this would be to partake in the practice oneself. This lends the argument some strength as the only way in which to prove it wrong to oneself is to partake in the practice and not arrive at the same conclusions concerning morality. I also do not entirely agree with Mackie’s argument, culture and societal expectations obviously have an effect on shaping our moral beliefs, however it seems clear that there is a two way causal relation between morality and culture as has been discussed above.
If we take a physicalist deterministic view of the world however, the question concerning the subjectivity of morality becomes very different. Subjective beliefs are those based on human preference, which in turn requires free will. If everything is pre-determined our desires and therefore preferences are also. From the big bang, the seeds of each individual’s morality would have already been sown. If all the causes which determined our morality have existed before of our evolution into human beings, then it seems to exist objectively in our own reality. However this conclusion depends upon the precise definition of subjectivity. Traditionally a subjective judgement is something influenced or based on personal feelings or beliefs. When we introduce the idea of determinism the meaning of personal feelings or beliefs becomes radically different. If we were to say that a subjective judgement did not require free will, then moral judgements could still be subjective based on this theory. If however free will was required the question changes as the word judgement could be replaced with the words causal response, and morality would lose its traditional meaning.
To conclude, even if morality does exist objectively we are unable to make an objective judgement unless we completely understand it without skewing our perception of it due to our senses, society and mental faculties. The only other possibility for making an objective moral judgement would be God, if in the traditional sense he/she created morality and the universe as we know it.
