What is Secular Moral Realism?
Secular moral realism is a meta-ethical position asserting that objective moral facts exist independently of human opinions, cultural norms, or divine commands.
Unlike religious moral realism (which grounds morality in God, such as in Divine Command Theory), the secular version argues that moral truths can be discovered through naturalistic inquiry, reason, and empathy. Just as there are objective facts in physics or mathematics, secular moral realists argue there are objective facts about what is morally good or bad (e.g., "torture is objectively wrong").
Core Components:
Mind-Independence: Moral properties exist out in the world, not just in the minds or attitudes of human beings.
Naturalistic Foundation: Morality is grounded in observable realities like human experience, evolutionary biology, conscious well-being, and logic, rather than supernatural forces.
Rationality and Empathy: Moral principles are derived from logical consistency and our capacity to understand the suffering and flourishing of conscious creatures.
Analysis: How It Works and Where It Fits
Secular moral realism sits at the intersection of atheist/secular philosophy and objective ethics. It attempts to answer the common critique that "without God, anything is permissible."
Contrasts with Anti-Realism: It opposes moral relativism (morality depends on culture), moral subjectivism (morality is personal preference), and moral error theory/nihilism (all moral statements are false because moral properties don't exist).
Common Frameworks: Secular moral realists often align with specific ethical systems to explain how we discover these facts:
Consequentialism / Utilitarianism:Thinkers like Sam Harris argue that moral facts are simply facts about the well-being of conscious creatures. Actions that maximize flourishing are objectively "good."
Kantian Rationalism: Immanuel Kant (and modern neo-Kantians) argued that morality is derived from pure reason and logical consistency (the categorical imperative), independent of religion.
Strengths (Arguments in Favor)
Aligns with Human Intuition: It deeply aligns with our strong intuition that certain acts (like cruelty for fun) are not just "unpopular," but inherently and universally wrong, regardless of what anyone thinks.
Universalism and Progress: It allows for the concept of moral progress. If objective moral facts exist, we can say that ending slavery was a genuine moral improvement, rather than just a shift in cultural tastes.
Solves the Euthyphro Dilemma: It avoids the classic theological problem of whether something is good because God commands it (making morality arbitrary) or if God commands it because it is already good (meaning morality exists independently of God anyway).
Weaknesses (Arguments Against / Challenges)
The "Is-Ought" Problem (Hume's Guillotine): This is the most famous challenge. Critics argue you cannot logically jump from a descriptive statement about nature (an "is," such as "this action causes pain") to a prescriptive moral statement (an "ought," such as "you ought not do this action").
The Argument from Queerness (J.L. Mackie): If objective moral properties exist in the natural world without a God, they would be profoundly strange entities unlike anything else in the universe. How do these "moral particles" exist, and how do we interact with them?
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments: Critics argue that our moral intuitions are simply the result of blind evolutionary processes designed to help our ancestors survive and cooperate. Because evolution optimizes for survival rather than "objective truth," our moral beliefs are likely just biological programming, not reflections of mind-independent moral facts.
While secular moral realism is a popular attempt to save objective morality without religion, it faces devastating critiques from within secular philosophy itself. To robustly debunk and rebut secular moral realism, one must dismantle its core premise: the idea that objective moral facts (e.g., "murder is inherently wrong") exist out in the natural universe independently of human minds, cultures, or divine commands. Here are the strongest philosophical arguments used to rebut and debunk it:
The "Is-Ought" Problem (Hume’s Guillotine)The most famous argument against naturalistic moral realism was articulated by David Hume. Hume pointed out that you cannot logically deduce an "ought" (a prescriptive moral command) from an "is" (a descriptive fact about nature).
The Problem: Secular moral realists (like Sam Harris) often argue that because certain actions cause physical pain or reduce human flourishing (an "is"), we therefore ought not do them.
The Rebuttal: This is a logical fallacy. Science can tell us that touching a hot stove causes tissue damage (a biological fact). But science cannot tell you that you ought to care about tissue damage. To cross from biology to morality, the secular realist has to smuggle in an unproven, subjective premise (e.g., "we should value human flourishing"). Thus, the foundation is not an objective fact, but a subjective preference.
If moral facts are real, objective features of the universe, how did humans come to know them? Secular realists usually point to human intuition and empathy, which evolved over millions of years.
The Problem: Evolution by natural selection does not select for "objective truth"; it selects for survival and reproduction.
The Rebuttal: Philosophers like Sharon Street argue that our moral intuitions (e.g., "care for your children," "do not kill your neighbors") were programmed into us by evolution simply because these behaviors fostered social cohesion and kept our ancestors alive. If our moral beliefs are just the result of blind biological programming geared toward survival, it is an incredible, unbelievable coincidence that this programming happens to align with "objective cosmic moral truths." Therefore, moral realism is an illusion foisted upon us by our genes to get us to cooperate.
Philosopher J.L. Mackie famously argued against moral realism by pointing out how utterly bizarre objective moral facts would have to be if they existed in a purely material, secular universe.
Ontological Queerness: If the universe consists only of atoms, energy, and physical laws, what exactly is a "moral fact"? It isn't a particle, a wave, or a force. If moral properties exist out in the wild, they would be profoundly weird entities unlike anything else in physics or biology.
Epistemological Queerness: Furthermore, they possess a magical "to-be-done-ness" or "not-to-be-done-ness." How could a completely blind, physical universe contain invisible laws that inherently demand humans behave in a certain way? Mackie argued that it is far simpler and more rational to conclude that these "queer" entities just don't exist.
The Rebuttal: Objective facts in the natural world do not carry intrinsic motivation. If a sociopath recognizes that torturing someone decreases human flourishing, but they enjoy doing it anyway, on what objective grounds are they wrong? The secular moral realist can only say, "You are acting against human flourishing." The sociopath can reply, "I know, and I don't care about human flourishing." Without a transcendent authority (like a God) to enforce or ground the "ought," secular moral facts lose their binding authority. They become mere observations that one is free to ignore.
No comments:
Post a Comment