I lean strongly toward unitary theory, with two caveats. First, not all specific moral statements need be true or false; some can have the middle truth-value (or no truth-value if you prefer to say that). Second, unitary-ness is not a logical truth—if true, it’s a consequence of the attitudes people actually have and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Why is there only one particular morality? Because people keep insisting on talking about it. We keep finding that, like Churchill, we prefer “jaw, jaw” to “war, war”. We keep trying to justify our ways to each other and getting meaningful responses back, in which people try and generally succeed to find similar motivations in each other with which to assess proposed rules, virtues, and goods. We can usually tell the difference between a moral argument, offered in the spirit of reasoning together about what to do, versus an exercise in the dark arts of persuasion. And enough of us prefer the former to perpetuate the search for mutually agreeable goals, rules, and virtues.
What is the one true morality? It’s too early to tell. But why think that there is one? Because of the great commonalities between human beings. Granted, we have different preferences, but in many cases it seems possible to step back from them and find a general principle like “I get to use my skills to create more of what I want, and you get to use yours to create more of what you want”—a principle that abstracts from individual differences, in a fair way, and leads to an outcome acceptable to both parties. In some cases it may not be possible—which is why I allow that some moral statements may be neither true nor false. (A theory should be no more precise than its subject matter.)
Where does morality come from? From our natures as both rational beings who communicate, and social beings who need to cooperate and derive enormous utility from that. This also answers the “why care” question—without implying what you call absolutism.
Mainstream philosophy comparison: Habermas and Scanlon hold roughly the same views on the points I’ve mentioned here.
This seems to me to be an ad populum fallacy. Just because everyone acts as if there is one, true morality doesn’t make it so. Or am I missing something?
The great commonalities between humans might make many of our moralities very similar, but I think there are some differences. For one example, I think eating (factory farmed) meat is a great moral wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything, even in principle, I could say to convince some other people to share my view.
There are two steps to my reasoning. First, if everyone acts as if agreement is possible, that tends to make it much more likely that agreement is, in fact, possible. The second step is a meta-ethical analysis which says that, if everyone freely and rationally agrees on a set of norms, virtues, etc., that is morality. (Or at least, an important part of it.) Of course, the second step is open to debate too, and popular opinion is irrelevant there. But a near-universal and deeply ingrained drive to reason-together-what-to-do is relevant to the first step.
If there are behavior codes you live by but you don’t think you could convince others to live by, you could call that “morality” if you insist. In that case, the rules that we all can rationally agree to cooperate under aren’t all of morality, but just a part of it—“justice”, maybe.
First, if everyone acts as if agreement is possible, that tends to make it much more likely that agreement is, in fact, possible. The second step is a meta-ethical analysis which says that, if everyone freely and rationally agrees on a set of norms, virtues, etc., that is morality.
I agree. But I think that people act as if agreement is possible not because they are thinking of morality in the consensus sense but rather that they are thinking of morality as an actual law external to people. For many of them, perhaps, even the law of God.
I wonder if there’s any experimental philosophy on lay people’s thoughts on meta-ethics. It would be interesting to see, for sure.
If there are behavior codes you live by but you don’t think you could convince others to live by, you could call that “morality” if you insist. In that case, the rules that we all can rationally agree to cooperate under aren’t all of morality, but just a part of it—“justice”, maybe.
You’re right that perhaps we’re debating definitions and not substance. But I think you’d be hardpressed to come up with what behaviors are actually in the “consensus morality”. And it’s going to end up a lot like cultural relativism.
What I’d advocate is more of an ends relativism—actually making things clearer by specifically stating which normative/moral ends we’re dealing with. For example, we could contrast the claim “One ought to be a vegetarian (relative to the end of utilitarianism)” versus the claim “One is ethically permitted to eat meat (relative to the common moral beliefs of our culture)”.
I doubt that much hangs what people’s meta-ethical intuitions are. Compare, for example, the issue of what people’s theory of the nature of “gold” is. If people generally think that gold is what it is because the gods have mixed their aura into it, still, what gold actually is depends only on what explains the features whereby we recognize it. That explanans still comes down to its having atomic number 79 - gods be damned. And, to boot, the religious theorists of Aurum might claim to high heaven that without its divine connection, gold would be worthless. But I doubt you’d find much jewelry in the trash can after they switch theories. Similarly, I don’t think a switch from divine-command to rational-agreement metaethics will result in trashing morality.
I lean strongly toward unitary theory, with two caveats. First, not all specific moral statements need be true or false; some can have the middle truth-value (or no truth-value if you prefer to say that). Second, unitary-ness is not a logical truth—if true, it’s a consequence of the attitudes people actually have and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Why is there only one particular morality? Because people keep insisting on talking about it. We keep finding that, like Churchill, we prefer “jaw, jaw” to “war, war”. We keep trying to justify our ways to each other and getting meaningful responses back, in which people try and generally succeed to find similar motivations in each other with which to assess proposed rules, virtues, and goods. We can usually tell the difference between a moral argument, offered in the spirit of reasoning together about what to do, versus an exercise in the dark arts of persuasion. And enough of us prefer the former to perpetuate the search for mutually agreeable goals, rules, and virtues.
What is the one true morality? It’s too early to tell. But why think that there is one? Because of the great commonalities between human beings. Granted, we have different preferences, but in many cases it seems possible to step back from them and find a general principle like “I get to use my skills to create more of what I want, and you get to use yours to create more of what you want”—a principle that abstracts from individual differences, in a fair way, and leads to an outcome acceptable to both parties. In some cases it may not be possible—which is why I allow that some moral statements may be neither true nor false. (A theory should be no more precise than its subject matter.)
Where does morality come from? From our natures as both rational beings who communicate, and social beings who need to cooperate and derive enormous utility from that. This also answers the “why care” question—without implying what you call absolutism.
Mainstream philosophy comparison: Habermas and Scanlon hold roughly the same views on the points I’ve mentioned here.
This seems to me to be an ad populum fallacy. Just because everyone acts as if there is one, true morality doesn’t make it so. Or am I missing something?
The great commonalities between humans might make many of our moralities very similar, but I think there are some differences. For one example, I think eating (factory farmed) meat is a great moral wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything, even in principle, I could say to convince some other people to share my view.
Good points to raise, thanks.
There are two steps to my reasoning. First, if everyone acts as if agreement is possible, that tends to make it much more likely that agreement is, in fact, possible. The second step is a meta-ethical analysis which says that, if everyone freely and rationally agrees on a set of norms, virtues, etc., that is morality. (Or at least, an important part of it.) Of course, the second step is open to debate too, and popular opinion is irrelevant there. But a near-universal and deeply ingrained drive to reason-together-what-to-do is relevant to the first step.
If there are behavior codes you live by but you don’t think you could convince others to live by, you could call that “morality” if you insist. In that case, the rules that we all can rationally agree to cooperate under aren’t all of morality, but just a part of it—“justice”, maybe.
I agree. But I think that people act as if agreement is possible not because they are thinking of morality in the consensus sense but rather that they are thinking of morality as an actual law external to people. For many of them, perhaps, even the law of God.
I wonder if there’s any experimental philosophy on lay people’s thoughts on meta-ethics. It would be interesting to see, for sure.
You’re right that perhaps we’re debating definitions and not substance. But I think you’d be hardpressed to come up with what behaviors are actually in the “consensus morality”. And it’s going to end up a lot like cultural relativism.
What I’d advocate is more of an ends relativism—actually making things clearer by specifically stating which normative/moral ends we’re dealing with. For example, we could contrast the claim “One ought to be a vegetarian (relative to the end of utilitarianism)” versus the claim “One is ethically permitted to eat meat (relative to the common moral beliefs of our culture)”.
I doubt that much hangs what people’s meta-ethical intuitions are. Compare, for example, the issue of what people’s theory of the nature of “gold” is. If people generally think that gold is what it is because the gods have mixed their aura into it, still, what gold actually is depends only on what explains the features whereby we recognize it. That explanans still comes down to its having atomic number 79 - gods be damned. And, to boot, the religious theorists of Aurum might claim to high heaven that without its divine connection, gold would be worthless. But I doubt you’d find much jewelry in the trash can after they switch theories. Similarly, I don’t think a switch from divine-command to rational-agreement metaethics will result in trashing morality.