This is the
second part of a discussion of morality. To read the first part about whether
morality is absolute or relative, please click here.
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| "Crowd" by Kheel Centre / CC BY 2.0 |
Does Morality Come From People?
In our focus
on morality we have so far discussed the nature of morality, comparing the
views of moral relativism with moral absolutism, and I presented some basic
evidence for the view that absolute morality exists. Today we want to extend
the discussion to look at the idea that morality has a human origin.
Some of the
theories of morality suggest that morals began as a product of human societies.
In this view, morality is a universally agreed-upon set of values that humans
have decided on over time and has been formed by cultural processes and
institutions, such as the legal system. These societal values originally
reflected the needs of ancient communities and were eventually formalised into
law. But this view struggles to deal with scenarios throughout history where
some actions, that were agreed upon by a society and ratified by their
governments, were clearly morally wrong.
For example
war criminals often hold publicly elected positions or are members of an army
carrying out the orders of their government. They are acting according to the
values of their society and their cultural institutions, but we can still
recognise that their actions were morally wrong. This points to the fact that
the moral law is separate to the legal
code. During the Nuremburg Trials, American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said
of the Nazis “The refuge of the defendants can
be only their hope that international law will lag so far behind the moral
sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be
regarded as innocent in law.” Clearly our moral sense – which points to
absolute morality – is a different thing to the behavioural agreements and
values our culture holds.
Another problem that can’t be resolved by a
communal values model of morality is that values in society change over time. Slavery
was an accepted feature of society thousands of years ago, but is now
universally condemned. Has it become immoral over time, or has it always been
immoral? Could the morality of slavery change again in the future? Either
slavery has always been morally wrong, and some communities in the past did not
judge correctly, or the moral landscape is constantly shifting. If it is
constantly shifting, how can we be so sure that our positions on abortion or
SSM are absolutely correct, and not just correct relative to our society? Societal
agreements aren’t big enough to ground a morality that applies equally to every
human being in every era.
A question I have for this model of morality
is how it deals with events that have never happened before. When the very
first murder occurred, was it wrong? How about the very first rape? If these
things had never happened before, how could the community have an agreement in
place about it? While some definitions could be formed very quickly by a
society that would allow them to prohibit all types of behaviour that had
hurtful consequences, the idea that an act could happen before it was assigned
a moral value seems problematic.
Another
theory of the human origin of morality is that moral principles have had a
survival benefit throughout the development of the human race. The idea is that
as social creatures, humans have been able to create stronger, safer societies
by adopting moral principles. But this is an even flimsier theory. Morality
often requires us to be self-sacrificial and to put others first, yet our
survival instinct is to look out for ourselves. Imagine a scenario where your
family is in a burning building and you are the only person who can rescue
them. Our moral instinct is to try and rescue them regardless of the risk to
our own safety, but our survival instinct is to stay out of harm’s way. There
is very often a direct conflict between moral thinking and survival thinking.
The other
difficulty is that a survival theory of morality could only lead to a pragmatic
kind of moral code, one in which the ends justify the means. If survival is the
goal, then things would be morally good if they help you achieve your goal.
Instead of being morally bad, lying could actually be morally good if it increased
your survivability. At this point survival theorists will often say that it is
the survival of the species that is the goal, not the survival of the
individual. But if it’s a question of my survival vs the overall benefit of my
species, why would I choose to benefit the species? If we reflect on human
nature, do we think that the majority of humans throughout the history of the
human world would choose to benefit the survivability of others at the cost of
their own survival?
The problem
with all human-origin theories of morality is that they are ultimately
subjective. The morality of an action is determined by the subject – by you or
I – as we respond to it. The action itself has no moral value, instead we
determine the moral value of an action according to our own opinions. This puts
us right back into the grip of moral relativism. If morals merely come from other
people, what makes those morals incumbent upon me as an individual? If people
can make moral decisions about what is right and wrong for everybody, then why
I can’t I be the person making those decisions? Why am I obligated to do what
you say is good and to avoid what you say is bad?
It seems to
me that a morality grounded in humanity (and therefore relativism) struggles to
explain the existence of moral duties – the responsibility we have to do good
and not evil. Each of us experiences a compulsion to follow our moral sense most
of the time and do what is good. We know somehow that we are personally
responsible to behave ethically.
From a very young age this is evident in us. I teach primary
school children in the junior years, and it’s my experience that 6 and 7 year
olds are very aware of their moral responsibilities. They feel guilt and shame
when they do something they know is wrong, even when it’s a minor issue and
they aren’t in very much trouble. How does this expectation that we are to live
up to a particular moral standard become developed in us so deeply at such a
young age, regardless of our background, culture or the beliefs of our family,
if morality is all just a matter of opinion?
Instead I
think we experience a world in which morality is objective – Rape is the
object, and it is wrong in itself. Not because you or I deem it to be wrong,
but because the act of rape has the moral property of wrongness. Under this view
rape is always and absolutely bad, regardless of the opinions of people. The
goodness or badness of the action is an inherent feature of the action.
If this is
true, then morality exists externally to the human race. It doesn’t come FROM
us, it comes TO us. And so the question must be: From where?
Please check back soon for the 3rd instalment of
this series on morality.
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