Are there any moral truths

1. Are there any moral truths? Paul Katsafanas

2. The other talks will discuss specific ethical issues. My talk will address a more general topic: What are we doing when we talk about morality? Are there truths about what is right and wrong?

3. What are we doing when we discuss morality? Our discourse about morality seems to presuppose that there can be objective facts about morality. Examples: when we say that murdering innocent people is wrong, or that helping those in need is good, we take ourselves to be expressing truths. Or, to put the point differently, if someone says “murdering innocent people is good,” we think he’s wrong.

4. How can there be any such thing as objective facts about morality? Two common forms of argument: What could moral truths possibly be? Is there any room for them in a modern, scientific view of the world? How could there be any moral truths, given that there’s widespread disagreement about what’s right and wrong?

5. Reponses The skeptical response: perhaps when we make moral claims, we’re just expressing our feelings, or contingent cultural beliefs, etc. If so, there are no moral truths. The constructive response: develop a theory that starts with some relatively uncontroversial premise, and use this premise to derive substantive ethical conclusions. If this works, there will be a criterion of correctness for moral claims.

6. Utilitarianism Start with a relatively uncontroversial claim about what’s valuable, or what’s worth pursuing: happiness and the absence of pain. E.g., John Stuart Mill writes, “pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and… all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.”

7. Utilitarianism So we have a claim about what’s valuable: pleasure and the absence of pain. Then we construct a moral theory telling us to bring about as much value as possible. The Principle of Utility: an action is morally right if it maximizes aggregate happiness. Otherwise, it is wrong.

8. Kantian Ethics Utilitarianism started with a claim about what is valuable, and urged us to maximize the amount of value in the world. Kant’s theory has a different form: it starts with a claim about what’s rational, and it simply tells us to act rationally.

9. Kant’s basic claim: Acting rationally is acting on principles with the following feature: you could also will that everyone else acts on these principles. Kant’s idea is that certain principles cannot be consistently willed as universal laws upon which everyone acts. For, when these principles are universalized, they generate contradictions.

10. An example of the type of contradiction Kant has in mind Suppose I’d like some money. I know that I won’t be able to repay this money. I consider making a lying promise to repay the money. In other words, I consider acting on this principle: I will make a lying promise to repay a loan, in order to secure some cash. Then, to apply Kant’s test, I ask whether I could will that everyone else act on this principle.

11. I find that I could not. For, if this principle were always acted upon, the institution of making loans on the basis of a promise to repay would quickly die out: everyone would realize that the process was too risky. So, Kant claims, I cannot simultaneously will to act on this principle and also will that everyone else acts on it. For if everyone else acted on it, the principle would no longer serve its intended purpose. So his idea is that certain principles are only effective if they are exceptional. Acting upon principles with this property is immoral: it consists of making an exception of yourself.

12. This is what Kant calls his Categorical Imperative Act only on that principle that you can at the same time will as a universal law.

13. Social contract theory Utilitarianism is based on a claim about what’s valuable. Kantian ethics is based on a claim about what’s rational. Social contract theory is based on a claim about what we’d agree to in certain hypothetical situations.

14. An example: Rawls The principles of justice are whatever principles we’d agree to in the following situation: We are in a bargaining situation with equal power; each of us is ignorant of: What type of person we are. What our capacities and talents are. What our gender, ethnicity, etc. are. What our place in society is. What our conception of the ‘good life’ is. That is, we don’t know what we consider to be the best way to live.

15. Whatever we would agree to in this situation is just. Notice that in this hypothetical situation, the only way in which you can pursue your self-interest is by pursuing everyone’s interest. For you don’t know which self you’ll be.

16. Conclusions I’ve very briefly presented three different types of ethical theories. Each of these theories has certain strengths and weaknesses. But for our purposes, the important point is that each theory provides a criterion for moral objectivity.

17. Each theory starts with a relatively uncontroversial claim, and tries to develop a moral theory out of this claim. Utilitarianism starts with a claim about what’s valuable: happiness. It tells us to maximize the amount of happiness in the world. Kantian ethics starts with a claim about what’s rational: acting in a way that is not self-contradictory. It uses this criterion to determine which actions are right and wrong. Social contract theory simply tells us that the rules determining rightness are whatever rules we’d agree to in a position of free, uncoerced, rational bargaining.

18. So each theory would provide us with a criterion for the truth of moral claims. In other words, if you accept the starting premise and the arguments based upon it, then you can determine whether particular claims about what’s right and wrong are true. So, if you accept the theory, you do get moral truths.