The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically.
Are there any philosophical refutations or arguments against this?
I cannot imagine that there are any refutations about this. Morality is a human construct. It is whatever we say it is. There is no absolute foundation to set it on unless you appeal to a deity that has set those values in stone (so to speak).
There are many arguments against it. They are known as “religions”. None reach the level of refuting it, though.
This was originally discussed in the Euthyphro dilemma, kind of the reverse of the fine distinction between Malem in Se and Malem Probibitum.
And it can be applied in the absence of God or a quorum of gods. (From the link):
“ Secular humanism takes the positive stance that morality is not dependent on religion or theology, and that ethical rules should be developed based on reason, science, experience, debate, and democracy. Some secular humanists believe in ethical naturalism, that there are objective, discoverable laws of morality inherent to the human condition, of which humans may have imperfect knowledge. Others have adopted ethical subjectivism in the sense of meta-ethics – the idea that ethics are a social construct – but nonetheless by way of utilitarianism advocate imposing a set of universal ethics and laws that create the type of society in which they wish to live, where people are safe, prosperous, and happy.”
The argument rests on the unstated premise that only tangible, empirically observable things exist.
This is a philosophical position commonly called materialism. Ironically, materialism is a belief which itself is not capable of empirical demonstration or proof; it’s a faith-based position, if you will.
One of the foundational axioms of the scientific method is that empirically observable things do exist — i.e. they are not illusions; our observations of them are not delusions. We can’t prove this to be true — that’s why it’s an axiom — but if we don’t assume it to be true then the whole scientific method collapses and, on the whole, assuming it to be true works out pretty well for us, so it’s an assumption most of us are happy to make.
Materialism goes beyond this by assuming that only empirically observable things exist. This assumption isn’t necessary to support or validate the scientific method, and is unsupported by evidence. We make this assumption (or, for that matter, the contrary assumption) because we choose to, basically.
We can observe the behavior of humans individually and in groups of varying sizes and complexities. Morality is one type of behavior. I can’t think of any reason to deny it exists.
I don’t think that morality is a “type of behaviour” in the way that, say, eating or composing poetry are types of behaviour. Rather, morality is a quality that characterizes behaviour, but it characterizes behaviour of any type.
62% of philosophers in 2020 leaned towards moral realism. I’m going to take a wild stab and say there are many, many arguments against anti-realism.
Start with Railton’s “Moral Realism” paper of 1986 and work your way forward from there.
Materialism can’t be proved, of course, but it can be demonstrated. Materialism makes predictions about what we see in the world, and so far these predictions have been accurate. It has also accumulated lots of evidence in support of it. I’m not sure that this is enough to be an empirical demonstration by whatever you mean by that.
And it is not at all faith based, in that if we got good evidence that materialism is not true then we’d change our view of it. Contrast that with faith-based religions, many of which happily toss out the evidence to maintain their faith.
Morality does, but how about objective morality? Much of what was moral to our ancestors is immoral to us, and vice versa.
I don’t recall ever seeing anyone arguing against objective morality because it is not tangible. The Euthyphro Dilemma is a much better argument, as well as history. And we can measure our opinions about morality, our moral sense perhaps, which does not say anything about the existence of objective morality.
I guess it’s not clear to me what the original question means.
It looks to me like @UDS1 already responded to this point before you made it:
And, in general, I support @UDS1’s response to the OP. The OP’s “argument” only works if you already accept that the only things that exist are “tangible objects found in the universe that can be measured scientifically.” Otherwise, it’s just begging the question.
The primary argument IMO is there is nothing scientific about the assertion that only things that can be measured scientifically exist. That is as much a profession of faith as the assertion that there is an omnipotent deity that has an objective code of morality we must all follow. Neither assertion can be be proven by scientific measurement, so both are professions of faith with no basis in scientific fact.
Whether the arguments there are good enough I won’t discuss, but one place that there are arguments for an objective moral code is in The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.
If I were a cannibal, it might be perfectly acceptable and morally right for me to eat the guy in the tribe a few miles away just like I eat cows. I believe there is an objective morality, but it is not the same for all of us. Maybe it could be defined within the boundaries of one’s own society or family or whatever boundaries are defined.
Well ethics is totally unrelated to science. I can’t think of a better argument than that.
Even if you are an atheist, you would probably have to acknowledge that many of the mandates in the Ten Commandments have been laws/beliefs in many other societies over thousands of years. There is no scientific reason for it. I can only term it an innate sense of right and wrong. That’s just my feeling.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; the Big Three of ancient philosophers, not coincidentally were each prophets of self-awareness. The human being’s primary obligation is to seek self-understanding, and to drop rationalizations and self-deceptions. Only after undertaking this can he or she perform in a moral manner. Without it, morality is just self-preservation and self-promotion by going with the flow (and this is where I Godwinize my argument by pointing to Adolf Eichmann as a paradigm of virtue - in his own mind and in the society he served without question).
Once the individual invests this effort in his or her self, value results. “I exist therefore I matter. You exist therefore you matter as well.” But if you exist as an Eichmann by any objective standard, I can adjust my esteem accordingly. That human beings “matter” is adequate “matter” in the OP meaning of the word.
Can I prop this up with the I and Thou premise?
As for cannibalism, or even shrewd Yankee horse-trading, humans can’t be expected to starve rather than compete. Cannibalism is mainly practiced by insage gouls like Albert Fish or people maddened by hunger like in the Holomodor. “Normalized” cannibalism only occurs in two situations:
Protein-poor environments like the Pacific islands or a stranded whaleboat, or megafauna-poor Aztecs (priestly cast only: commoners made do with guinea pigs). And even then it’s cloaked in self-deceptive religious belief.
Symbolic consumption of the enemy: the Tonkawa had access to bison, but they’d eat Commanches out of respect for their power. You don’t find cannibalism in the form of “we have plenty of animal meat, but we’ll eat you instead.” The Maori killed and ate captives to demonstrate power, but they didn’t raise captives for food, even though they could have.
Many ancient societies have built pyramids. Not because any one person (or alien) told them to build pyramids, but because pyramids are structures that work and last. They are objectively useful building designs for ancient peoples.
It can be proposed that certain moral designs work and create societies that last. Having a prohibition on murder and theft, for example, is important for societies to flourish.
Other moral designs, like how to deal with racism, are maybe not as clear cut, there can be a variety of “successful” designs, or at least designs that don’t immediately collapse society, so it’s harder to say that one morality is objectively better than another one.
It’s hard to say that cable stayed bridges are better than suspension bridges, even though engineering is a pretty objective discipline.
I don’t think any objective morality exists, but not because it can’t be measured scientifically. What we humans consider moral is a combination of a built-in evolved moral sense, and the society we live in.
Other beings with human-level (or higher) intelligence could certainly have a different set of morals that they would consider obvious and objectively true.
For example, if an intelligent species evolved from an ant-like system, with one intelligent queen, other intelligent workers, and a bunch of drones, then sacrificing the little people (the drones) would be considered good and right (I probably have the terminology wrong, but I think I’m being clear). A system closer to communism might actually work, and be considered the most obvious and moral government.
An intelligent species that evolved from lions might consider it scandalous and immoral if a new male didn’t kill or chase off the offspring of the female he has just gotten with.
An intelligent species that wasn’t social might not have any problem with murdering other individuals if they encroached on your territory.
One often heard argument is the analogy with mathematics. Some people have found Platonism, the idea that mathematical objects exist in themselves, plausible, or perhaps the more restrictive stance that there are mathematical truths that don’t correspond to truths about any physical objects. So why shouldn’t the same be true about moral truths? To the extent that mathematical truths can be discovered without having to ground them in empirical truths, so then moral truths could likewise be discovered.
(And of course, it’s rather uncontroversial that there are some truths that aren’t discoverable empirically. The preceding sentence is one. For take its negation, that all truths are discoverable empirically: clearly its truth is not an empirical matter, making it self-negating. So it must be the case that its opposite is true.)