I think I am as open-minded as most people come, when it comes to philosophical and religious things. But I am still troubled, a little bit at least, by ethical nihilism.
I believe in God still. And I believe in being good. But that is about all. (I also believe that there is one ethical system, that is better than the rest. But that is not what this thread is about.)
My question is about the Global Falsity theory of ethics. If I understand it correctly, it means philosophers that subscribe to ethical nihilism, are troubled by the fact that we all still subscribe to one form of ethics or another, believing we are correct in being ethical. (I am trying to summarize it as best I can. Others could probably do a better job.) My question then is simple: if we are all deluded in being ethical, what do they propose as a solution to this alleged problem? Anarchy? Because even anarchy, technically, is an ethical system.
A couple of other points I would make. I have also read people who subscribe to this theory, often still are very ethical themselves, and in fact are rather opinionated even on the subject. And I would also point out that many of the people who write these articles are clearly against in, and so the article themselves might be biased in this way.
And of course it is just a theory. No one yet has said we should abandon all ethics and abandon all hope. My question is just what they propose as a solution to this (alleged) problem. I think that still is a valid question. Correct me if I somehow don’t understand the problem they are alleging.
Are we discussing people who believe that “nothing is right or wrong” and “nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral”, as the Wikipedia page you linked to says? If so, I’d first like to verify that anyone actually believes this. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who believes these things. Even those who say they do generally don’t.
I guess I should make clear my question is purely a philosophical one. As you say, no one really believes we shouldn’t be good. Yet the “global falsity problem” claims just as it suggests, that it is a problem. My question simply is then, What is the solution (philosophically, of course)?
Well, do you want to live in anarchy? I don’t. I’d rather live in a world where, out of sheer danged enlightened self-interest, we sensibly declare a truce and agree to act as if those ethical principles actually exist, provided they spark the appropriate results.
I mean, we don’t want to get robbed or killed, so we agree to team up for to jail thieves and murderers – and we all know it wouldn’t happen if we didn’t put in the work, we could all declare tomorrow that we’re going to stop – but even upon noting that it’s all just an artificial arrangement we’ve cobbled together, we of course still do it, right?
Near as I can tell, philosophers who reach the conclusion in question keep acting pretty much the same way they did before. Because why wouldn’t they?
Lots of us believe this. Nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral, good or evil.
However, there is near unanimity among societies that some things are, in fact, really damned bad, and we make rules against them. Murder is not intrinsically bad – and, indeed, even our own culture permits killing in warfare, and the execution of certain felons. But that isn’t so much the point: the point is, our rules are artificial constructs of our societal preferences.
We can’t even rely on scientific observations. Yes, it’s almost certain that societies that permit murder are less happy, less productive, and less likely to survive than societies that forbid it. But this simply pushes the assumptions back one level: who says that happiness, productivity, and survivability are intrinsically good?
Many of our moral values are built in to our animal nature. Social mammals tend to follow certain patterns of living that strongly resemble our moral laws. But, again, this isn’t intrinsic. It’s a result of our animal evolution.
Ultimately, we have to accept that our moral systems are good, because we like them. It’s nothing better than circular. I’d rather not live in a society where murder is accepted, and I’ll bet good money you feel the same way. That’s all we’ve got: an enormously strong moral consensus.
I pretty much agree with this. But it’s not so much about the type of society we’d “rather” live in, but about what type of society is known to be stable. A society where nothing is punishable is not a stable society.
A moral system is as concrete as a language or a republic.
A moral system is an objective one, in the sense that an individual has no influence on the moral system s/he lives in and cannot change it on her/his own as an adult.
The idea of Global Falsity does not reveal a problem, in my opinion - it simply enunciates a fact: despite showing a concrete and objective nature, moral systems are cultural conventions developed by human beings, who value things differently.
The idea of Global Falsity becomes a problem when people insist the objective nature of moral systems grounds on the absolute character of the values and principles that these systems comprise.
The solution is being pragmatic. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world that doesn’t rely on picking some axioms to build on. Why should ethics be any different?
Understand that it’s not a problem for the man in the street/the moral actor. It’s a problem *for the moral realists *(not the ethical nihilists themselves, who see it as descriptive).
The statement isn’t that we are deluded in being ethical, it’s that we’re deluded in thinking our being ethical means something about the reality of the universe. I think Mackie said it best : Ethics must be invented, not discovered.
But not before then? They must have come from somewhere, and the only place they could have come from is the humans. Developed might be a better term than invented, as it was no doubt a process (well, it still is a process), rather than a one-off invention.
Good points. From what I remember, the process of biologic selection went hand in hand with the gradual building of certain dietary, hunting, sexual and funeral habits as well as group interaction practices that constituted the foundation of archaic ethics. The moment hominins looked more like modern man than they resembled previous hominids, in the sense they manufactured complex tools and made use of language, moral systems were already there.
If you believe there is one ethical system better than the rest, you are not open minded. Not to worry; “open-mindedness” is not a particularly useful preferred good.
Ethical systems are not based on the natural world, because ethics does not exist in the natural world. “Ethical” is a concept created and applied by humans. “Good/evil,” “fair/unfair,” “humane/inhumane,”…on and on, are all invented whole cloth from the human mind. The natural world has no ethics. From a natural perspective, it is not a greater “tragedy” for this earth to get offed by a comet than for a lifeless moon to be destroyed.
That is the sense in which “ethics” become “nihilistic.” Without a plea to an Absolute of Nature from which to derive a position based on fact, no contention is more “correct” than the next. So what? Only philosophers find this a dramatic development.
That an ethical system has no plea to the Absolutely Correct not mean we as humans cannot come up with a preferred way to behave, and a preferred way to enforce it. (Doing that requires a stable society, as John Mace mentions.) As it turns out, for most humans exposed to the possible choices, there seems generally to be a preference for the qualities we describe as “fair,” “humane,” and so on. But at some level, the tension between altruistic and narcissistic interests never goes away. So a commonly-agreed upon ethical system ameliorates the social instability caused by that conflict.
Of course ethics exist in the natural world, humans are part of the natural world. It’s the claim that they somehow exist in a supernatural fashion, as a Platonic ideal, that’s being questioned. You have it entirely backwards.
I always read it as: for every individual, their ethics have to be invented. Sure, they’re cobbled-together from pre-existing bits that float around in their society, but the internal systems of ethics we all have are our own creations, not inherent systems we only uncover. Mackie isn’t talking about the ethical framework of a society, he’s talking about the individual’s engagement with that framework based on that individual’s internal life.
I find it dubious that humans suddenly started showing ethical behaviour but our primate ancestors didn’t. We often see rudimentary ethics in animals (e.g., some animals live in tribes, and take care of the sick and the old), but we would regard these as mere facts or observations, and not as ethical rules. When dealing with humans, however, we suddenly start looking at such questions thru an ethical or moral lens. Nothing wrong with this, but we should recognise that this lens tells us more about ourselves than reveal any fundamental facts about the universe.
Moreover, I question the assumption that there’s actually a universally accepted set of behaviours that are considered ethical. There are so many things that we take for granted today that were not accepted a few hundred years ago (“slavery is bad”), and vice versa (“don’t question your elders”, “believe in god”, etc). This is exactly what one should expect. Language, science, technology, and law evolve with time–and this also varies from place to place. Why should ethics be any different?
All ethical systems are axiomatic. Since an axiom has to be accepted and can’t be proven, all ethical systems are based on unproven assumptions.
You are correct that even those who say they know this, tend to fudge the results. They usually wind up saying “I hold to such-and-such a principle” and imply pretty strongly, or even say outright, “so should you”. The trick is to recognize that the word “should” has no real meaning in that sentence. Because “you should hold to such-and-such a principle” implies “you should hold to such-and-such a principle because X” and there is no X. If an axiom could be proven, it wouldn’t be an axiom.
Practically, what happens is that people say “here is the axiom, and you have to accept it because we are going to make you accept it.” Notice that this doesn’t establish the validity of any axiom - it just shows who is stronger (the majority, your parents, the Supreme Court, whoever).
People who say they are OK with ethics based on “majority rules” tend to change their tune when they are no longer in the majority, but that can’t be helped.
