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Consider Ethics Theory, Readings and Contemporary Issues

Bruce N. Waller Third Edition

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Table of Contents

P E A R S O N C U S T O M L I B R A R Y

I

1. Thinking About Ethics

1

1Bruce N. Waller

2. Egoism and Relativism

20

20Bruce N. Waller

3. Ethics, Emotions, and Intuitions

40

40Bruce N. Waller

4. Ethics and Reason

72

72Bruce N. Waller

5. Utilitarian Ethics

87

87Bruce N. Waller

6. Pluralism and Pragmatism

108

108Bruce N. Waller

7. Social Contract Ethics

134

134Bruce N. Waller

8. Virtue Ethics

153

153Bruce N. Waller

9. Care Ethics

169

169Bruce N. Waller

10. Ethical Nonobjectivism

186

186Bruce N. Waller

11. Moral Realism

200

200Bruce N. Waller

12. The Scope of Morality

211

211Bruce N. Waller

13. Free Will

230

230Bruce N. Waller

II

14. Freedom, Moral Responsibility, and Ethics

256

256Bruce N. Waller

15. The Death Penalty

275

275Bruce N. Waller

16. Abortion

291

291Bruce N. Waller

17. Should the Police Use Deceit in Interrogations?

303

303Bruce N. Waller

18. Homosexual Sex

320

320Bruce N. Waller

19. Can Terrorism Ever Be Justified?

334

334Bruce N. Waller

20. Should Performance-Enhancing Drugs Be Banned from Athletics?

346

346Bruce N. Waller

363

363Index

Thinking About Ethics

ETHICS AND CRITICAL THINKING This is an invitation to think carefully about the nature of ethics and ethical inquiry. You’ve no doubt already thought carefully about a good many ethical issues, such as abortion, capital punishment, environmental ethics, academic honesty, and animal rights. We’ll be looking at some of those issues, and others besides. But we’ll also do something that’s not quite so common—we’ll be thinking about the nature of ethics itself: how do we have knowledge of ethical principles? Is knowledge of ethics similar to knowledge of physics? Can we have knowledge of ethical principles? Are ethical principles fixed or changing? Are they absolute or circum- stantial? These are sometimes called metaethical questions, that is, questions about the nature and concepts of ethics. Thinking carefully about those questions may help in thinking more carefully about such issues as economic justice, abortion, and treatment of animals. In any case, it may help us gain a clearer perspective.

Thinking carefully about ethics involves, rather obviously, thinking carefully. So it will be useful to start with some consideration of how to think carefully, critically, and effectively, and how to avoid some common errors. Some people maintain that ethics is not based on reasoning, but is instead built on emo- tions and feelings, or on intuitions. In fact, some maintain that ethics is not a matter of finding truth at all: there are no objectively true ethical principles, and thus there are no true ethical principles to be discovered through reasoning (nor by any other means). Those are interesting positions, and you may ultimately conclude that ethics is not based on reasoning. But even if that is your conclusion, it is still useful to start with some considerations about critical thinking, since in order to reach such a conclusion you will have to use careful reasoning. We will examine several readings by people who argue against reason-based ethics, as well as several readings arguing that reason is the foundation of ethics. Regardless, all of them give arguments for their views, and those arguments must be critically examined.

What’s the Question? Perhaps the first and most crucial step in critical thinking is the most obvious, but also the most neg- lected: be clear on exactly what is at issue. That is, when examining an argument, think first about precisely what the argument is supposed to be proving; get clear on the conclusion of the argument. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this was the most vicious crime I have ever come across in all my years as dis- trict attorney. It was cruel, callous, heartless, and brutal,” the district attorney insists in her argument to the jury. Is the district attorney’s argument relevant?

That depends. It depends on what conclusion she is arguing for. Suppose she is arguing that the defendant is guilty of a brutal murder, but the question at issue is whether the defendant is the guilty party (the defense

From Chapter 1 of Consider Ethics: Theory, Readings, and Contemporary Issues, Third Edition. Bruce N. Waller. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved.

Thinking About Ethics

claims this is a case of mistaken identity). In that case, the district attorney’s argument is irrelevant to that conclusion. Everyone agrees the crime was awful; the question is whether the defendant did it. (Incidentally, relevance is not determined by whether the claim is true or false, but by whether it matters if the claim is true or false. It may be true that the crime was brutal, but it remains irrelevant to the defendant’s guilt. And on the other hand, a false claim may be relevant: if an unreliable eyewitness falsely claims to have seen the defendant commit the murder, that claim will certainly be relevant to the question of whether the defendant is guilty. It’s relevant because if it were true, it would be strong proof of the defendant’s guilt: it’s relevant because it matters whether it is true or false). Suppose now that the defendant has already been found guilty, and since this is a capital case the trial has moved on to the sentencing phase. In that case, exactly the same argument (“this was a brutal and heartless crime”) will be relevant to the question of whether the person who did the crime should receive the death penalty. Of course the argument may be relevant without being completely convincing; the jury might decide that the crime was indeed brutal, but other mitigating factors (such as the age of the defen- dant) count more heavily against capital punishment.

When an arguer uses an irrelevant point in support of a conclusion, we say that the arguer has committed the fallacy (or argument error) of irrelevant reason. It is sometimes called the red herring fallacy. When fox hunters would send the hounds out to chase a fox, and then ride their horses across the fields in pursuit of the fox and hounds, they would eventually tire of the “sport,” and wish to go back to the lodge for tea and scones. But the dogs would still be chasing the fox, and thus be difficult to col- lar. So the handler of the dogs would drag a bag of oily cooked herring (herring turns red and becomes very oily when cooked) across the trail of the fox. When the dogs ran into the smelly oil from the red herring, they would lose the scent of the fox, mill around aimlessly, and thus be easy to catch. So that’s where we get the name for the “red herring fallacy”: the fallacy “drags a red herring,” drags a distraction, across the trail of the argument, and thus takes listeners off the track. We get so worked up about the red herring of what a brutal murder it was, we forget that the real issue is whether the defendant is guilty.

Red herrings are a common argument trick. When the Bush administration was arguing for an attack on Iraq, they spent a lot of time talking about the importance of fighting terrorism. Of course every- one is legitimately concerned about terrorism, but the real question was not whether we should fight ter- rorism, but whether Iraq was engaged in terrorism. By dragging the terrorism red herring across the trail of the argument, it was easy to distract people from the more difficult issue, for which proof was very thin: the question of whether Iraq was supporting terrorist activities or providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

So the first step in evaluating arguments is to be clear on exactly what’s at issue, exactly what the conclusion is. If I’m the defendant in a burglary trial, the prosecutor must prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But my defense attorney does not have to prove that I didn’t do it; instead, he only needs to show that there is a reasonable doubt of my guilt. If you evaluate the defense attorney’s arguments as if they were designed to prove innocence, then you will evaluate them badly.

Ad Hominem Fallacy There are many argument fallacies in addition to the red herring fallacy, but one of the most important in the study of ethics is the ad hominem fallacy. An ad hominem argument is an argument “to the per- son”; that is, an ad hominem argument is an attack on the person. And an ad hominem fallacy is an attack on the source of an argument. If someone gives an argument, we must evaluate the argument on its own merits, not on the merits of the person giving the argument. Suppose you come into your ethics classroom and discover an argument written on the blackboard, say, an argument against the death penalty. In order to evaluate that argument, you don’t need to know anything at all about who wrote the argument on the board. Suppose you read the argument and decide it is a strong and convincing argument, and then you find it was written by Bill Clinton, the politician you most despise. That would not change the argument. Then you learn that a mistake had been made, and the argument was written by Mother Teresa, one of your moral heroes. That does not change one word of the argument. So if you are evaluating arguments, the source of the argument is irrelevant. And if you attack the source of the argument in order to discredit the argument, you have committed the ad hominem fallacy.

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It is especially important to keep that in mind when discussing ethics, because ethics discussions can get intensely personal and downright hostile. If you don’t believe me, have a nice discussion of the abortion question with someone who holds a view diametrically opposed to your own. Such “discussions” often gen- erate more heat than light, and one reason is because they often degenerate into ad hominem abuse: the pro-choice advocate is branded a “baby killer,” and the pro-life side is called a “neanderthal.” Difficult as it may be to discuss such issues without sliding into fallacious ad hominem arguments, it is essential if there is to be serious ethical inquiry. One way to avoid such abusive arguments is to keep in mind that the character of the arguer is irrelevant to the quality of the argument. When arguing about ethics—or anything else— you can attack arguments as vigorously as you wish, but attacking arguers is fallacious. To see why, consider this example. Spring break is approaching, and at the end of class I give you an argument for why you should not drink and drive: drinking and driving can be easily avoided if you plan in advance, it places others at unfair risk, and the negative consequences for you—if you are in an accident, or get arrested—can be very severe, certainly out of all proportion to any benefits you might derive from drinking and driving. Is that a good argument against drinking and driving? Not a very original one, but it does give some legitimate rea- sons to avoid drinking and driving. Now suppose later this evening you see me stagger out of the tavern, fumble around for my keys, finally get my car started, and weave away down the street, taking out three side-view mirrors and one fender in the process. If you now say, “Well, there goes Bruce, totally plastered, driving merrily away. And just this afternoon he was arguing against drinking and driving. Any argument that sleazy hypocrite makes against drinking and driving must be pure rubbish.” That would be an ad hominem fallacy. True enough, I’m a sleazy hypocrite who argues for one thing and then does another. But that does not change my argument. It’s still the same argument, whether I’m a sleazy hypocrite or a paragon of virtue. Suppose you learn that it was my evil twin brother you saw coming out of the tavern and driving away. Would that suddenly rehabilitate my argument? Of course not. It’s the very same argument, and it must stand or fall on its own merits, and it doesn’t matter whether the arguer is drunk or sober, hypocritical or sincere, vicious or virtuous.

Ad hominem attacks on arguers commit the ad hominem fallacy. But not all ad hominem arguments are fallacious. Some may be perfectly legitimate. Think back to the O.J. Simpson trial. One of the key wit- nesses for the prosecution was police officer Mark Fuhrman (he was the first officer to arrive at the Simpson residence, and he found the famous glove—the one that didn’t fit when Simpson tried it on). He testified under oath that he never used racial slurs, and that he held no prejudice against blacks. But he lied. It turned out that the man could hardly open his mouth without spewing out racial hatred (he once said that he would like to round up all African Americans and burn them), and he particularly despised interracial couples (like O.J. and Nicole) and often harassed them. This key prosecution witness was a lying, vicious racist. The defense made an ad hominem attack on Mark Fuhrman, but it was perfectly legitimate. Mark Fuhrman was giving testimony, not argument, and in order to evaluate his testimony you need to know if he is truthful, unbiased, and objective—or that he is not. If Mark Fuhrman were giving argument instead of tes- timony, then his vile character would be irrelevant: you would have to hold your nose and evaluate his arguments on their own merits. If I give testimony that I have seen extraterrestrials (“Take my word for it, I saw them with my own eyes, they’re here”), then you need to know about my drinking habits, my history of drug use, my mental stability, and my reputation for integrity. But if I give an argument for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (“Think of the billions and billions of stars in our galaxy, and all their planets and moons, and how many opportunities there would be for life to develop in other solar systems”), then my character, habits, and mental state are irrelevant to the quality of my argument. So when you are arguing about ethics, you can attack one another’s arguments with all the energy and ingenuity you can muster, but to avoid committing the ad hominem fallacy you must resist attacking the arguer.

The Principle of Charity and the Strawman Fallacy One other principle of critical thinking is especially important in thinking critically about ethics: the principle of charity. That is simply the principle of being charitable or generous toward the positions and arguments we oppose. In other words, you should interpret opposing views and arguments as generously, fairly, and honestly as you can. That doesn’t mean you can’t attack opposing views; by all means, subject them to the closest scrutiny and the fiercest criticism—and be willing to have your own views subjected to

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the same criticism. After all, that’s one of the best ways of separating the wheat from the chaff when we examine ethical issues. But resist the temptation to score cheap points and win false victories by misrepre- senting opposing views. When someone distorts or misrepresents a position in order to make it easier to attack, that is called the strawman fallacy. It’s easier to knock down a strawman than a real man, and it’s easier to defeat a distorted version of a position than the real thing. In both cases, it’s not much of a vic- tory. Following the principle of charity—always represent opposing views in their strongest and most plausible form—is the best way of avoiding strawman fallacies, and it is also essential if you are to have any chance of convincing your opponents that your own view is more plausible. If you attack and defeat a dis- torted and inaccurate representation of my position, I am not likely to be convinced that your arguments are effective.

Strawman fallacies are depressingly common in ethical debate. Think again of the abortion contro- versy. If I am pro-life, I may accuse my opponents of believing that it is morally acceptable to kill infants up to age one. In fact, there are a few people who do hold that view. But obviously that is not the view of most pro-choice advocates, who favor elective abortion but vigorously oppose infanticide. If I represent my opponents as favoring infanticide of one-year-old children, then I am attacking a strawman. I may win that argument against the strawman position, but I’m not likely to convince those pro-choicers whose views I have misrepresented. Likewise, suppose I am pro-choice. I then accuse my pro-life opponents of wanting to outlaw not only abortion but also all forms of artificial contraception—there would be no birth control pills or condoms. Again, some of the opponents of legal abortion do take that view, but it is an extreme view, and certainly not the view of most persons who are pro-life. It is a much easier position to attack, and so I may easily defeat this strawman version of the pro-life position, but again, such a strawman “victory” is not likely to convince many people.

Consistency One last point concerning thinking critically about ethics. A key question in examining ethical views is whether they are internally consistent, and whether they are consistent with our other beliefs. Suppose I oppose elective abortion but support the death penalty, and you accuse me of being inconsistent in my principles. I will respond that my views are not inconsistent: I oppose abortion because it is the taking of an innocent life, but those who are executed are not innocent. Or suppose the argument goes the other way: I oppose capital punishment, but support the right to elective abortions, and you accuse me of inconsis- tency. I will respond that abortion kills a fetus, but a fetus is not a full person; capital punishment is carried out against persons. Or I might say that in the case of the fetus, the mother’s right to control of her own body takes precedence; in contrast, when an imprisoned person is executed there is no question of interfer- ence with a woman’s control of her own body.

Those may or may not be adequate answers to the charge of inconsistency; that will be a much debated question. However, I cannot simply accept inconsistencies in my ethical views. That is, I can- not legitimately say: Okay, so I have views that are in conflict and beliefs that contradict each other; so what? I can’t legitimately make that response, because allowing contradictions within my views makes it possible to prove anything, and thus makes careful reasoning impossible. Think about it for a moment. Suppose that you allow me both of these contradictory premises: “The sky is blue,” and “The sky is not blue.” Then I can “prove” anything at all. What follows from “The sky is blue”? Well, it follows that either the sky is blue or anything you like. (It’s true that I am a human; therefore, it is also true that either I am a human or I am the richest person on Earth, and it is also true that either I am a human or Oprah Winfrey is an extraterrestrial, and it is also true that I am a human or there is no corn in Iowa.) So it follows that the sky is blue or genocide is good. But remember, we also have the contradictory premise: The sky is not blue. So let’s put them together: Either the sky is blue or genocide is good, and the sky is not blue. (That’s like saying “Either Brendan is in the library or he’s at the tavern, and he’s not at the library.”) It follows that genocide is good. We could use the same reasoning to “prove” that Miami is in Maine, or that the Pacific Ocean does not exist, or anything else. If you allow a contradic- tion, then you can “prove” anything. And that makes accurate reasoning impossible. If your views con- tain contradictions, you have to deal with those contradictions (either by rejecting one of the conflicting views or by finding a way to reconcile them); you can’t just let them fester.

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There is a well-known saying by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” People sometimes use that slogan to defend sloppy think- ing: to defend thinking that includes contradictions and does not insist on consistency. But that’s not what Emerson meant. Emerson knew the danger of internal contradictions. What he meant was simply that it is alright for your ideas and beliefs to change. Beliefs that you now hold don’t have to be held forever; it’s okay to change your mind. Maybe some of your beliefs, perhaps even some of your ethical beliefs, cannot survive careful scrutiny. If so, perhaps you should discard them and replace them with new ones. As Emerson suggested, it’s nice to keep an open mind. But it shouldn’t be so open that it allows internal contradictions.

STUDYING ETHICS If you take a course in geography, you expect that the course will make you a better geographer. If you take a course in creative writing, you anticipate that the course will improve your creative writing. And it is rea- sonable to hope that a course in chemistry will make you a better chemist. So when you take a course in ethics, what should you expect? That you will learn more about ethics? That seems a minimum expectation. But should you also expect that you will become more ethical, more virtuous, and a better person?

Before we go too far in exploring whether a course in ethics is likely to make you a morally better per- son, perhaps we should agree on what would count as moral improvement. And there’s the rub. It’s not so easy to decide what makes a morally superior person. That is the sort of thing we’ll explore: how do we decide—and can we decide—what counts as moral virtue and as morally good behavior? There are many different views on that question, and the purpose is not to tell you which view is correct. Rather, will help you explore a wide range of distinctive and often conflicting accounts of ethics, and the focus will be on helping you decide where your own views fit. Perhaps in the course of examining these views and where your own ideas fit along this wide spectrum, you may decide that some of your ethical opinions should change. But that’s not the purpose. There are plenty of moral self-help books, and there are plenty of books that will tell you in no uncertain terms what you ought to believe about ethics.

The Nature of Ethical Principles Should you expect studying ethics to make you ethically better, the way you expect studying math to make you a better mathematician? Some people say yes, and others say no. That’s one of the questions we’ll examine. But there are lots of questions in ethics. After all, ethics is a vast subject, with a long and remarkable history. There are many good places to start an examination of ethics, but among the most basic (and disputed) questions in ethics is this one: do ethical truths have to be eternal verities, not really part of this world of decay, known through some special power; or are they more mundane, ordi- nary facts, part of the standard furniture of our world, and known through ordinary means? (Of course there is another option: ethical truths don’t exist at all, anywhere; we’ll set that possibility aside for the moment, but we’ll return to it.) When you seek ethical guidelines, what characteristics must they have? It’s hard to know if you’ve found them unless you know what to look for. What would count as an ethical guide, an ethical principle? “If you want to be trusted and prosperous, practice honesty.” Benjamin Franklin thought that was really all the justification needed—and perhaps all the justifica- tion possible—for honesty: it pays, long term. Contrast that with the starkly unconditional form of the Hebrew commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Of course you could read this as: If you don’t want to get into trouble with God then don’t bear false witness. But most people interpret it not as some arbitrary rule that you must follow to retain God’s favor, but rather as a basic moral principle that God (in His moral wisdom) recognizes and puts in the form of a commandment.

“What counts as ethics?” is a question worth pondering. Think for a minute about what ethical principles would have to look like, in your own view—not whether you think abortion is right or wrong, whether it is wrong to cheat on your taxes or your lover, whether you have an obligation to help the

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impoverished or prevent global warming or protest human rights abuses, and not the question of whether you believe there actually are objectively true moral principles. Instead, think about what you would be willing to count as a genuine moral principle. (If you deny that such principles exist, or that such princi- ples are objectively true, you must have some sense of what it is that you are denying the existence of: you can’t claim that a jabberwocky doesn’t exist if you have no idea what a jabberwocky is.)

The first reason to consider what counts as a moral principle is to avoid talking past one another. Suppose I think that genuine moral principles must be absolutes like “Never lie,” and I deny that there are any true moral absolutes of that sort. You believe that moral principles are much more modest: “If you want to promote trust and harmony, then you should be truthful in your dealings with others,” and you insist that we have good reason to believe that there are such moral principles. We may suppose that we are in basic conflict—“There are no genuine moral principles,” I shout; “There certainly are,” you reply—when perhaps we really agree. You might agree with me that there are no moral absolutes, and I might agree with you that more modest moral principles make perfectly good sense. Or maybe not. Perhaps we really do have a funda- mental difference in our views. But we won’t know that until we look carefully at exactly what each of us counts as a moral principle.

There is another important reason to look carefully at what you count as a moral principle. It may tell you a lot about yourself, and some of your basic beliefs and assumptions. Those assumptions and beliefs may be so deep and influential that you hardly know they are there. Like wearing tinted contact lenses through which you view everything you see, such assumptions color the way you see the world without you even being aware of them. Perhaps you think real moral principles exist, perhaps not. That is a question you have probably thought about already. But what do you count as real moral principles? (Not the question of whether real moral principles exist: I don’t think unicorns exist, but I know what I would count as a unicorn.)

For many people, genuine moral principles must be very special indeed. Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, believed they are eternal truths known only through pure reason: reason that sees through the illusions of the senses and discovers the fixed and absolute and immutable truth. Moses found moral truths on a mountaintop, in the awesome presence of God, permanent moral truths carved into endur- ing stone. Descartes, a French philosopher of the seventeenth century, believed that God implants moral principles in our minds as innate ideas. And in the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant discov- ered the basic governing principle of morality through rigorous reason, an absolute and unconditional moral truth that filled him with awe: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily they are reflected on: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”1

In contrast, others have considered moral principles to be much simpler and more mundane. Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, regarded moral principles as basic guides to living the good life. Thomas Hobbes, a British philosopher who lived in the seventeenth century, thought moral principles were devised by humans to bring order and peace to society. Jeremy Bentham, in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth- century Britain, asserted that the basic moral principle is simple and obvious: maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for everyone. David Hume, a British philosopher of the eighteenth century, insisted that morality is rooted in the simple affection that human social animals feel for one another.

There are many more examples of this fundamental conflict between those who regard morality as con- sisting in special absolute principles, and those who see moral rules as a more ordinary phenomenon based in natural affections or devised rules of order. And obviously there is enormous variation among those on both sides. For example, Plato thinks absolute moral rules are discovered by Reason, while Moses thinks they are ordered by God. On the other side, Hume thinks moral rules are based in natural animal affections, while Hobbes traces them to social agreement. Those differences within the two camps notwithstanding, it is worth noting the basic contrast between the two perspectives—and worth thinking about where your own sympa- thies lie in this basic conflict. For this contrast involves considerably more than the nature of moral principle. If moral principles are universal, absolute, and eternal principles—as Plato, Moses and Kant believe—then we can’t discover them by taking surveys. Nor can we find them through psychological or biological study, no matter how carefully and thoroughly we try. And we cannot create them by social agreement. Instead, such universal principles will require special ways of knowing. They are discovered, but they are not discovered the way we discover new elements or a new species of beetle or the Loch Ness Monster.

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Knowing Ethical Principles If at last we drag some reclusive beast out of the depths of Loch Ness, then we will discover that some species we had thought long extinct still survives. Maybe such creatures exist—probably not. Uncondi- tional, absolute moral principles are different. Those who believe in them believe that they must exist. They don’t exist only if we like them, or happen to recognize them, or choose to adopt them. Rather, they are universal, eternal moral principles that are unconditionally true whether anyone recognizes them or not. There might have been a Loch Ness Monster; it happens there is not. But eternal moral principles have no such contingency. They are absolute truths, not discovered by fishing in Loch Ness nor by any other form of observation or experiment. So not only are there special universal moral principles but we also require special powers or capacities to recognize them. The sensory powers that reveal a new beetle species are not adequate for this task.

What powers must we have to recognize such absolute moral truths? That varies, depending on what the absolute moral truths are. Some claim the truths are dictated by God, and are given to us by special rev- elation. Others hold that each of us has a special innate moral capacity—a conscience, or a moral sense— that implants in us the basic moral truths. Philosophers such as Plato and Kant maintain that the special power that reveals such eternal moral truths is the power of Reason—not the ordinary reason that enables you to select a horse to wager on in the eighth race at Belmont, but a power of Reason that enables you to see beyond mere appearances and surface features and discern deep, underlying moral truths. But whatever the means by which we discover absolute moral principles—whether by God’s special revelation, or some remarkable innate intuitive power, or through sublime Reason—this is not a natural capacity like sight or hearing that we share with other animals. Rather, this is a special power that sets us apart from the natural world: a power that makes us almost godlike.

If you think of moral principles as more mundane, conditional matters, then you are likely to have a more modest account of how those moral principles are recognized. Moral principles aren’t written in the heavens, nor are they special absolute truths. Since they are not extraordinary, they require no extraordinary powers for their understanding, and they do not set moral humans apart as unique and special. If morality is based in feelings of sympathy and social concern, then morality requires no special powers or esoteric capacities. For example, Darwin believed that morality is simply a natural result of social sympathy:

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.2

Natural Morality Versus Transcendent Morality So, when you think of morality, what is your image of the subject? Is morality something that rises above the natural world, something that transcends the natural world? Or is morality a more natural process: based on our emotions, perhaps, or on rules we draw up for promoting social harmony? We might call it, for conven- ience, the contrast between natural morality and transcendent morality, or between contingent morality and absolute morality.

This is an issue people feel strongly about. Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, insisted that there can be no morality other than absolute morality:

Abandoning an absolute ethical moral standard leads irresistibly to the absence of ethics and morality. Each person determines his own ethical/moral code. That’s anarchy. Humans become their own gods and decide, each in his own way, what is good and what is evil. Evil becomes good—good becomes evil. Upside down morality! Good is ridiculed! Evil is dignified!3

So, only absolute moral standards can keep us from anarchy. Give up absolute moral standards, and soon murder and mayhem will be celebrated as virtue, and we will have no moral guidance whatsoever. Those who oppose absolute ethics have little patience with the transcendent absolutism favored by Chaplain Halverson. Ethics requires no mysteries or miracles, they would insist, and denying transcendent moral

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absolutes does not lead to moral anarchy. After all, humans come equipped with social sympathies and common needs and interests, and we don’t require absolute God-approved moral principles to recognize that some types of behavior undermine society and others enhance the social welfare for all. Whether bond traders in Manhattan, cattle traders in the Sudan, or spice merchants in India, the value and bene- fits of cooperation and honesty are obvious enough, and require neither divine sanction nor special insight.

GOD’S COMMANDMENTS AND ETHICS Let’s start by looking at some views that champion absolute moral principles: moral principles are eternal, universal, fixed truths. Like the stars, they exist whether we discover them or not, and they offer steady points of light for reliable moral navigation. Among such absolutist views we obviously find some religious doctrines. One religious version of absolutism goes by the name theological voluntarism. That’s just a classy name for a very common view: Moral principles are set by God, God commands them; and God neither changes nor makes exceptions, so God’s commandments are fixed, eternal, and absolute. What is right is whatever God commands, or whatever God chooses. God doesn’t condemn murder because murder is wrong; rather, murder is wrong because God condemns murder.

Theological voluntarism is so named because it makes ethical principles dependent on what God wills. Something is good because God wills that it be so, not because God recognizes it to be good. It is some- times called the Divine Command theory of ethics: Good is whatever God commands, and only what God commands is good. On this view, God’s will or God’s command is the whole of ethics. A law or principle is right if and only if it is willed (commanded) by God.

Many people turn to religion for ethical guidance. Indeed, there are some who adamantly insist that their personal religious beliefs provide the only acceptable ethical standards: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” is an example of such an approach. But even for those who have unwavering faith in the pronouncements of their own religion or religious leaders or sacred texts, ethical issues can sometimes pose quandaries. For example, one may insist on the importance of the commandment that “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” and then when faced with a difficult situation—you are hiding escaped slaves from slave catchers—your obligation to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” might lead you to pro- tect these escapees from capture, torture, and enslavement and thus lead you to “bear false witness”: “No, I have not seen any escaped slaves.”

And the problems can get even thornier. In the very same chapter in which God orders “Thou shalt not kill,” God also commands the slaughter of whole cities—men, women, and children—who have the misfortune of living on the land that God assigns to the children of Israel. “Put to the sword every inhabi- tant, and spare not one” is hard to reconcile with “Thou shalt not kill”; so what should we do?

Ethical Principles as Divine Commandments This raises serious questions concerning the relation between ethics and religion. Perhaps the most basic of these troubling questions are these: Is an ethical guideline (or law) right because God commands it? Or does God command it because it is right? That is, do ethical principles exist only because God affirms them? Or does God affirm these ethical principles because (in His or Her wisdom) God recognizes the truth of these ethical laws? If you are religious, you might wish to take a moment to think about your answer to that ques- tion, for your answer makes a big difference in the way you think of ethics.

Does God command us to be honest because honesty is good? Or is honesty good because God approves of honesty? This may seem a strange, perhaps even a disturbing question. The question exposes a tension between two fundamentally incompatible sources that the Western religious tradition has struggled to combine: the religious views of ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the views of Aristotle; and the reli- gion of the ancient Hebrews, of Abraham and Moses. Aristotle’s God is a God of reason. In fact, Aristotle’s

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God is perfect, completely self-sufficient, and absolutely unchanging. He wants for nothing, and passes eternity thinking about thinking. Since He is omniscient, He can’t try to discover new truths: He knows everything already. And since He is already perfect, He can’t engage in any self-improvement projects. Obvi- ously, Aristotle had little sympathy with the popular Greek notions of the gods Zeus and Diana and Triton: gods who plotted, lied, changed their minds, appearances, and affections, and generally seemed to fall a good deal short of perfection. Since God (Aristotle’s God) is perfect, He must be changeless: if a perfect God changed, then any change would have to be for the worse and would result in imperfection.

Contrast Aristotle’s conception of God with the traditional Hebrew notion. The God of Abraham changes His mind more often than some undergraduates change majors. He creates humankind, then becomes disgusted and resolves to destroy them all; but He finds one good man, so He changes his mind and saves Noah and his family to make a new start. God works out a special deal with the children of Israel, then becomes angry at them and sends them into bondage in Egypt. He eventually rescues them and gives them a new set of rules to follow, but then discovers them worshiping a golden calf and His wrath is kindled and He resolves to destroy them all. Again He changes his mind, and instead kills sev- eral thousands. Trying to combine this hot-tempered Hebrew God with the perfect unchanging calm of Aristotle’s God is no easy task, and one place the tension comes into play is in considering God’s relation to the principles of ethics. Aristotle’s God knows all and reasons perfectly and thus knows and under- stands the true ethical principles. He recognizes true ethical principles because He is infinitely wise, not because He makes them. The Hebrew God, by contrast, wills a set of moral laws: the children of Israel must follow those laws because they are God’s commandments, and what makes them ethical principles is that God commands them. Whatever God commands is right, because it is God’s commandment. God does not recognize what is morally good; rather, the commandments are moral principles because God commands them.

If you believe that ethical principles exist only because God commands them (the position we called theological voluntarism), then the study of ethics is for you a rather limited exercise. It consists entirely of trying to discover what ethical principles God wills, and there is no room whatsoever to reason about or critically examine ethical questions. There are people who hold such a view, but it obviously requires powerful faith. After all, on this view you cannot examine the ethical principles pronounced by God in terms of their reasonableness or justice or fairness. If God says that it is good to be kind to others, that is not because God recognizes that kindness is good; rather, it is strictly because God pronounces that kindness is good. Had God pronounced cruelty good, then cruelty would be good, and there would be nothing more to say about it.

Thinking About Ethics

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Galileo Galilei.

Problems with Theological Voluntarism Those who adopt such a view hold one absolute principle: if God says it then that settles it. If God com- mands being kind to children, then being kind to children is good. If God commands torturing children, then torturing children is good. Those who believe in an austere and majestic and incompre- hensible God often find this view appealing. It is motivated by the fear that if there were a moral law independent of God, then God would be constrained (by His perfect goodness) to follow that moral law. But God should not be constrained by anything, not even goodness. So God makes morality by His will, rather than following a moral law that He recognizes as true. Adopting this theological voluntarist view (good is whatever God wills it to be) requires a rather reckless leap of faith, for there is no way to criti- cally evaluate such moral principles. You cannot say—if you adopt this view of morality—that you believe in this religion or this account of God because it is morally attractive: such an evaluation would require a standard of morality independent of what God pronounces. It is certainly possible to hold such a theological voluntarist view, and some people seem quite content with it, but it leaves little space for the critical study of ethics.