What is morality, and within morality what can be considered fact or merely an opinion.

Reasons For Action – V4ARFA - - By David Weinberg 4020504

In looking at this question, two major issues arise immediately from the text; what is morality, and within morality what can be considered fact or merely an opinion. In this essay, we hope to investigate further the basic idea of what morality is, and using views from modern philosophers; try to further the debate over whether there are infact moral truths. It is important to note that the argument is essentially one sided in the philosophical world, with most authors arguing that moral facts do not exist and very few genuinely defending their existence. Thus in order to tackle this more successfully, we will be touching on the views of J L Mackie and contrasting it with the view of other Moral Relativists.

What is morality? Stanford dictionary considers morality to be ‘[used to] descriptively refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society’. If this is the case, Moral Facts would be considered a natural extension of ‘codes of conduct’, thus moral facts would be the law and its statues. Unfortunately the subject is not as clear cut as this, and the debate over moral facts starts with a debate over the true meaning of Morality.

Morality can be described in two ways; either to label Morality using a ‘descriptive definition’, or using a ‘normative definition’. The argument over which description should be considered the intellectual paradigm is as yet unresolved, and gives us an indication of the arguments that will put forward on the same basis’ to question whether there are moral facts.

‘Descriptive Morality’ refers to the different interpretations of what morality is by each society. In this case morality is a changing concept; i.e. it takes into consideration different authorities and etiquettes that exist in each different society and thus forms its moral judgements around these central themes. Thus, although each morality may differ, it does not harm the concept that morality is a guide to behaviour laid down by each society, by its founding (or subsequent) members. What is important to highlight is that this is not a morality of guarantee or fairness; in this sense, we can see the actions that society as morally reprehensible in our judgement, but still with a strong sense of morality. This is the argument put forward by Ethical Relativists, as they argue that this demonstrates the inability for there to ever be a homogenisation of moralities and thus there cannot be universal moral paradigms, but that moral facts exist (and only exist) in some form in each society.

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‘Normative Morality’ on the other hand, does not refer to any specific society, nor that any society has a morality; it refers to a universal truth, the concept that “people” will know what is right from wrong. To take this concept further, it is the belief that although society is flawed, it does not see morality as tangible (i.e. through rules and regulations) but rather as a natural perception that an action will cause harm if performed and vice versa. This means that there must be definite content within moral codes, which is in contrast to descriptive morality which does not place definite restrictions on morality. It is within this branch of morality that the debates over what the set of specific moral codes are, and whether or not a universal set of distinctions can ever be achieved. This explanation helps us to understand where the debate over moral facts originates from and thus gives us the ability to open up the debate over the existence of moral facts.

To start we will discuss the claim put forward by Moral Objectivists; that there are underlying moral facts in every society, that there is an undeniable urge that influences our actions and the decisions we make. This is the less popular view and finds its home mainly within religion, specifically Judo-Christian religions which have a source of tangible authority that contain codes of practise; for example the 10 commandments. They detail basic moral standards such as ‘thou shall not kill’, ‘thou shalt not steal’ and provide actual rules that members of that ‘society’ should keep and uphold. There are two major models within Objectivism; Duty Based Theories and Consequential Theories. The difference here is an action/outcome relationship with Duty Based theories influencing the action you take and Consequential theories as gaining a desired outcome.

Many famous philosophers have contributions to this debate. Emmanuel Kant; father of the theory of perpetual peace, argued that “[you should] Act only according to that maxim”. This theory stresses that if you act according to moral codes and standards, then the outcome will be a desirable one whereas if you act in the interest in the consequence then you may provide a short-term miscarriage of justice. John Stuart Mill on the other hand disagrees with this and sees short-term injustice as less detrimental to society in the long run if the outcome will produce the greatest pleasure; which of course is tied in with his theory of Utilitarianism. This also draws striking parallels to Machiavelli’s theory of social politics, who argued that the Prince cannot always act in ways that are considered good; he must act in his best interests (which in turn Machiavelli argued would be the best for society) even if it condones an action such as murder.

The contrasting view here is that of Moral Relativism; the school of thought that argues that moral facts do not exist in a physical form. It has many derivatives ranging from those who believe there is no moral code whatsoever (amoralist) to those who believe that there can be moral judgements without moral facts (quasi-realism). This theory argues there can be moral substance; without moral fact.

This is the argument essentially put forward by J L Mackie, who argues there are “no objective values” but argues that there are “value statements” which can “evaluate many sorts” in relation to “assured standards”. What this means is that there can be a judgement on the merit of an issue, which can be compared to that individual issues’ paradigm, without establishing a universal fact. This argument, Mackie argues, extends to the idea of morality by introducing ‘first and second order statements’. Briefly Mackie makes a distinction between first order statements which are used to assert an opinion or judgement, and second order statements which give an account of first order statements. Mackie’s argument is that in general we use first order statements to make moral judgements and that this should be reversed to use second order statements so we are able to assess the status of a moral judgement before accepting it, yet they always remain independent of one another.

Moving a step further we come to the issue of opinion, which was the second part of our title question. Here Moral Relativism divides into two main schools of thought; “Subjectivism” and “Conventionalism”. Subjectivism is the idea that something is right or wrong in the perception of the individual in question; i.e. it is subject to the morals of the person being examined. For example person A may believe that it is wrong to not give charity, whilst person B, although may agree that charity contains good moral value, does not necessarily see it as morally reprehensible if one doesn’t give charity at every given opportunity. Here person A sees giving charity as a ‘moral fact’ in their eyes but person B does not feel it so important thus gives it ‘a moral value’. Thus the argument that there can never be a complete set of Moral Facts seems to be supported by subjectivism. Conventionalism is the moral perception of a complete society and can be entrenched in the history or culture of that society. The same is true here, where society A may believe it is a ‘moral fact’ to swear in public, society B may not condone swearing, but sees it as a ‘moral value’ to avoid swearing, conceding that there may be an instance where swearing is not morally culpable.

To conclude, to ask whether there are moral facts is difficult to come to a definite answer on. It is clear that there are strong arguments both ways, but that there are major exceptions to both sides of the argument. One can argue, as we have earlier, that there are general underlying moral codes which we all accept as ‘moral law’, but the importance of these perceived laws tends to fluctuate in a subjective way. One can argue that the Ten Commandments are only the basis of the original 613 commandments and thus we should be following those religiously; however some are outdated due to advances in modern science. The argument against moral facts is a stronger argument, accepting moral codes and values, but not saying that these values are homogeneous across all societies. Where this argument breaks down, is over the nature of relativity. One can argue that an individual’s view is shaped by nurture rather than human nature and one can make the accusation that moral realism is based solely on the previous society’s teachings being passed down without any rival concept to appraise their moral codes value with. To summarise, the argument that there are no moral facts tends to eclipse that of moral objectivist, but the question one must ask throughout this thesis is whether this is truly a philosophical debate, or rather a misinterpretation of the English language?