A Philosopher Explains Moral Realism
An invited speaker asked me to explain moral realism to him. He said he had never really understood it. This is my attempt.
Thomas Sowell wrote a great book called The Quest for Cosmic Justice. “Cosmic” justice does not exist. Some people are just better looking, smarter, funnier, more capable, more athletic, more musical, more agreeable and conscientious, and consequently richer than others. Is it fair? No. The category of “fairness” does not apply to happenstance. It is neither fair nor not fair–only things humans do to each other and their procedures are fair or not. For instance, manipulating a system to extract huge salaries while contributing almost nothing to it is unfair–often Boomers at the expense of the younger generations. David Graeber made a request for people to send him anecdotes if they considered their job to be “bullshit:” i.e., a waste of time where it would be better that their job did not exist. He was flooded by people evaluating their jobs in this manner. Most academic administration positions or overpaid do-nothings in middle management in business with Ivy League degrees would qualify; an employment goal that, in many cases, their scheming parents wanted for their children. They are bloodsucking leeches on the face of the body politic, sinecures at the expense of exploited students in the case of the former. As is often the case, this situation is made possible by government intervention in the form of student loans, allowing colleges to jack up the fees to pay for superfluous administrators, coincidentally right around the limit of students’ ability to borrow. Hospitals, too, have suffered from a metastasis of administrators. Unlike cosmic justice, this behavior is immoral.
When mathematicians do math, they may draw a triangle on the board. The triangle will be imperfect. It is an approximation only. But they have in mind “triangularity” itself–one where the angles add up to exactly 180 degrees. Morality and moral truths bear some relation to the “customs and values” of society, but the latter can be compared with triangles drawn on boards. “Customs and values” are more like the weather report than the weather, cosmology rather than the starry heavens above, physics, and not physical reality. Those things are related to what they describe, but they can also be entirely wrong and misguided. For instance, in ethics, single virtues can become so exaggerated that they turn into vices. Plato’s Republic puts such an emphasis on justice that the postulated social structure would be quite unbearable and immoral. Destroying the family, instituting breeding programs, forcing all children into nurseries, and ejecting all poets from the city, i.e., mass censorship, would arguably not even be just. Similarly, motherly compassion is good, but if it is not tempered with a more fatherly drive for achievement and independence, it becomes a bad thing and not even compassionate anymore. Universities, for instance, would start becoming obsessed with harm avoidance and not hurting anyone’s feelings rather than pursuing truth and maintaining academic standards and requirements. The whole point of tertiary education would be undermined. By taking compassion too far, harming students this way is not compassionate.
Plato’s notion of a Form of justice (morality) instantiates this line of thought where perfect justice exists as a heavenly entity, while we try and frequently fail to approximate it.
If “customs and values” are confused with morality per se, then one will see all sorts of variations between societies, some of which are inconsistent with each other. The question would then arise: how can moral realism exist since there are no true contradictions? Moral realism does not refer to customs and values all being morally true, nor to all our moral intuitions being correct. Although, it should be borne in mind that what might appear immoral from one vantage point might be fine if limited resources are taken into account. For instance, Inuit killing antisocial psychopaths who refuse to participate in the hunt and sleep with other men’s wives when they are away and who have been given multiple chances to reform might be the only way to deal with them. Their lifestyle of following their food around is incompatible with a well-heated, expensive, guarded prison with cooked meals and healthcare on tap.
In graduate school, a professor taught a class called “Moral Realism.” At the time, the concept seemed opaque. All these years later, it seems just as hard to remember what moral non-realism is supposed to be. If morality exists as something real, it must be possible to be wrong about it, including on a society-wide scale. Moral realism contrasts morality with ideas about morality. Non-realism looks at morality as a useful fiction. Or, as a biologically derived evolutionary accident. Either way, it would be pretty trivial and nothing to get too worked up about. Genocide, betrayal, matricide, patricide, and infanticide would all be morally neutral activities in actual fact, and our horror of them manufactured in one case, which is useful to regard them so, and happenstance in the other. Since usefulness is dependent on its goal of having actual value, then that train of thought ultimately depends on moral realism, too.
In real life, only psychopaths regard morality as fiction. They lack the brain function to perceive moral truths and imagine that the rest of us only pretend to have a conscience. Consequently, they consider themselves our moral superiors (I know, ironic) for being honest enough to admit that they do not have one.
Morality is one of those invisible, non-measurable things that exist, like mathematics, creativity, imagination, consciousness, emotion, meaning, purpose, love, knowledge, and so on. Just because it is intangible does not mean it is not there or that it is not real. There are mathematical truths and moral truths that could be discovered by aliens just as much as we earthlings. Provided, that is, aliens are not immortal and somehow impervious to harm, not social creatures, and so on.
A key foundation of morality is reciprocity. One good turn deserves another, as does one bad turn. If one receives a gift, it must be reciprocated at some point. Every single culture on earth has a gift-giving, gift-receiving, gift-reciprocating custom, as described by Marcel Mauss’ anthropological book, The Gift. That means that this elementary aspect of morality is not a matter of cultural transmission or cultural invention. Exactly how one reciprocates varies, but not the fact of doing it. Rejecting a gift is highly offensive unless it is a gift from a stranger in some public space, as is failing to offer a gift, like an invitation to a wedding from someone who was reasonably expected to be invited.
Is it really true that one must not merely receive gifts, accumulating stacks of them, and never return the favor? Yes. Is it really true, and not merely thought to be, that only giving gifts but refusing to accept gifts in your turn is morally incorrect? Yes. Every culture on earth agrees because these are moral truths that we perceive. Morality is cosmically true, just as it is true that mathematical truths are true, though abstract. Even chimpanzees will share their food with another chimpanzee who has shared his food with them. They will groom a chimpanzee who has groomed him. The one who has received food in the recent past or been groomed, both of which are gifts, will respond in kind. Is the truth of reciprocity a convention? No. It is axiomatic.
Some moral truths also found in nature, such as the goodness and beauty of parental love, get taken up and reinforced by social mores. We note this behavior and reinforce it with social approval. Its goodness and beauty are not, however, derived from this reinforcement or attempts to codify it.
Axioms are foundational truths regarded as self-evident. All mathematics is based on axioms. An example is P = P. If P is equal to anything, then it is equal to itself. Axioms are so basic to thinking that they are not susceptible to proof. They are that upon which proofs are based. Suppose someone were to disagree that P = P; there is nothing more to say except to stare in disbelief at the person. Is P = P cosmically true? Yes. Can it be proven to be true? No. Could human thought survive abandoning that truth? No. One would have stepped outside the human community and become an idiot in the etymological sense, someone uniquely deluded and incapable of intelligibly conversing with others. From Heraclitus: we share a world in common when awake and a private world when we dream. The key question is what he has in mind in being “awake” and “dreaming,” most probably both literal and figurative.
Imagine that someone has saved your life, and that same day you refuse them a bed for the night. Saving your life is a gift to be reciprocated. That person could also have donated a kidney or part of a liver to save your life. Do you really owe them? Yes.
I drove a friend of my wife to the airport around ten times. Since her flight would be around 6 a.m., I would pick the friend up at 3a.m. I would set my alarm, go to bed, get up, and turn up exactly on time. The friend would be waiting with her luggage. I would drive her to the airport 45 minutes away, return home, and return to bed. My wife would invariably be away when the friend needed this favor, so it would always be me doing it. On one occasion, the friend even asked me to drive her on New Year’s Day since the tickets were cheaper. The friend had driven me at a more reasonable time of day twice or so. I then asked her to drive me to the airport about a year later. She refused. She said that her block was having a party the previous night, and she wanted to be free to enjoy herself. Since she was so egregiously in gift debt to me at that point and had even ensured that my own New Year’s Eve would be similarly spoiled in the past, I vowed never to drive her to the airport. She left a message a year later asking for a ride from me, at which point I communicated this vow to her. She had the decency to apologize and agreed that it had been wrong of her.
When this story is told to students, they gasp at this woman’s behavior. No one has any doubt about who was in the wrong and why. It is a gross violation of the axiom of reciprocity, like refusing to offer a bed for the night to someone who has recently saved your life. It is not a custom or convention of reciprocity. Or, if it is, that custom or convention is built on a truth that even a chimpanzee recognizes.
Someone suggested that there might be brutal countries on earth inhabited by people who would consider my driving my wife’s friend to the airport to be foolish. As it turns out, they might have a point. But, on top of that, they would consider me a chump to be exploited. Such an attitude is not compatible with civil society. When times are tough, it is even more important that people work together. Difficult conditions mean that narcissistic exploitation of others can be tolerated even less. Such people will be ostracized or killed. No one will marry them, work with them, or want to be their neighbors. Isolated individuals are likely to starve since hunting is always hit and miss, there is no one to share with, and they are vulnerable to wild animals and groups of hostile humans. There are occasions like war and natural disasters when the whole system breaks down, and there is a mad scramble for survival. When it is every man for himself, then one can imagine morality simply being temporarily ignored. However, there are no moderately functioning societies like that.
Newborn babies stare longer at faces that are more beautiful than plain faces. Their assessment as to who is plain and who is beautiful is exactly the same as adults. The beauty of faces, at least, is not a matter of learning or cultural norms at its core. The same holds true for morality. Three-month and five-month-old babies make moral assessments of behaviors, as proved by a series of experiments. The experiments present the babies with scenarios played out by puppets or geometric shapes anthropomorphized by putting eyes on them. When one puppet is seen as helping another puppet either go up a slope or open a box, the five-month-old baby will reach for the helpful puppet as the one it wants to hold. Three-month-olds are too young to reach, so they communicate their approval by staring much longer at the helpful puppet. If a puppet is seen to be positively obstructive, stopping a puppet from getting up a slope or from opening a box. In that case, the babies both reject this puppet and express a desire to punish this behavior. This is communicated by reaching for a puppet who has acted in an obstructive manner towards the bad puppet. They actively approve of the obstructive puppet who caused suffering and was antisocial to suffer in his turn.
Primates make similar assessments about who is good and bad, who can be trusted, and who cannot. Someone who has “accidentally” spilled orange juice, a drink they love, is treated entirely differently from someone who has clearly spilled it on purpose. The ability to do this would be associated with survival. Humans make moral assessments of human faces in a split second. This assessment need not be perfect, just good enough.
Is it true that mean puppets who have been positively malicious in their behavior deserve to be punished? Yes. It is cosmically true. It is so obvious a three-month-old baby can see the truth of it. They express their approval of the punishment. It is not the result of enculturation. They are just too young for that. They cannot themselves do anything naughty because three and five-month-old babies cannot even crawl, a prerequisite for mischief.
Biologists might point out that reciprocity has survival value for the creatures involved. That is true. But is the goodness and rightness of reciprocity also true? Of course, it is. If I help you move, and you refuse to help me move. If I save your life through the donation of a vital organ. If I drive you to the airport at all sorts of inconvenient times and you refuse to drive me there, then you have violated your obligations to return the favor, the gift. You have been bad and deserve to be punished. The best punishment would be never getting a ride to the airport or no one helping you move. To disagree with that is similar to disagreeing that P = P. No further discussion about morality or mathematics is sensible in either case.
The truth of moral realism is best communicated by pointing. Similarly, one does not teach children to appreciate beautiful things by giving them long lectures on the nature of beauty, which are likely wrong anyway, but by pointing at beautiful things and recommending their admiration. One might read them a wonderful book and wait for their positive response.
The three-month-old babies did not need to be lectured about the rightness of punishment or the agreeableness and desirability of helpful individuals, lectures that they would be unable to understand. They just saw and assessed.
The right hemisphere of our brains gives us a direct, intuitive connection to the reality around us. It is also where we process the emotional content of speech and interpret facial expressions. None of those things involve language or logical analysis. Nothing we do is infallible, so intuitions can be mistaken. But they are sufficiently good that we have managed to survive long enough to pass on our genes and successfully rear our children. We can often just point to what is real rather than capturing it in words. The left hemisphere provides abstractions, language, and analysis. A coherent theory of truth says that all is well if one’s ideas avoid contradiction and are mutually reinforcing. That is a left hemisphere perspective. A correspondence theory of truth says that one’s ideas must have their basis in experienced reality. We are always already in the world, and from there, we try to make sense of it if necessary. Moral realism fits better with this latter view.
Aspects of morality are experienced. One can theorize or speculate after the fact, but morality is not itself the product of theory or speculation. A capuchin monkey knows that it is not fair if he gets only a piece of cucumber when the monkey next door gets a grape for performing the same task and doing it equally well. Is he right? Yes. He has not been enculturated or taken classes in ethics. He directly perceives the wrongness of how he is being treated. And, we agree with him. We can see it, too.
Moral realism rejects the idea that morality is merely useful or that, at its core, it is merely a matter of customs and conventions.
Modern moral theories like utilitarianism and Kantianism are wrong and pernicious. They are both attempts to move morality and moral understanding over into the realm of the left hemisphere, including logic, reason, and language. It works no better for morality than it does for beauty. We cannot even adequately define beauty. We can identify the golden ratio, but things can deviate from that and still be beautiful. And some beautiful things, like music, have nothing to do with it. Newborn babies identify beautiful faces, so language, logic, and reason are unnecessary for their perception. Three and five-month-old babies perceive moral rightness and wrongness while possessing the barest minimum of language and reason. Utilitarianism is a vicious sacrificial cult that ignores questions of guilt or innocence; in fact, it does not use those categories at all. It does not think in terms of someone deserving praise or punishment. It merely looks at what is useful or convenient, and it treats human beings in the manner of inanimate objects. When considering inanimate objects, only the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is activated. When considering social and moral situations, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) comes into play as well. The vmPFC reaches down into the limbic system, bringing our emotions online, though still governed by the PFC, and they are necessary for proper social and moral decision-making. Psychopaths never activate the vmPFC and so make their inhuman calculations; treating human beings no differently from objects.
When the vmPFC is experimentally temporarily deactivated, people turn into consequentialists. Kantianism posits all sorts of complicated counterfactuals and appeals to the moral law, basing moral injunctions on whether they can be universalized or not, requiring moral decision-makers to be rational agents, and ends up ignoring the consequences of actions altogether, though they often play a part in moral decision making. One wonders what Kant would have made of the moralizing babies. According to studies mentioned in Robert Sapolsky’s Behave book, it has been found that we treat people better and more consistently when our actions are based on feeling and moral intuition. This changes, however, when a person is in our outgroup rather than ingroup. In that case, coldly deciding to use only the dlPFC works better. When someone is in our outgroup, we regard them as beyond the moral pale, so it should not be surprising that our normal moral behavior is suboptimal.
Moral realism does not entail moral infallibilism. It is a metaphysical stance, not a recipe for epistemological omniscience. Aristotle pointed out the situation-specific nature of moral behavior, making moral generalizations of limited use. While moral axioms never change, moral behavior is generally objectively relative to the circumstances and the qualities of the parties involved. Morality governs our social interactions. There are no algorithms for how to get along with one’s spouse, though there are a few things that one should avoid, like expressions of contempt. What works for one spouse will not work for another. Moreover, what worked in the past with a spouse may not work in the future. Healthy social interactions cannot be encompassed by rules.
The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis equated humanity, as opposed to animals, with knowledge of right and wrong. There seems some truth to this. But there are plenty of times when we get confused and do not know. Yet, there are times when we are absolutely certain. Wittgenstein gives the example of being wrong about which language one is speaking. We are about as certain as possible on a topic like that. Most other things we might assert are less sure than that. Certainly, items of belief that rely on theory will be less assured. Furthermore, there are moral assessments of one’s own behavior that we have no doubt about. Usually, negative examples are the easiest to see. As a graduate student, I had promised to proctor a visiting professor’s exam for him since he was away at a conference. Before the exam, I went downtown for a bureaucratic task concerning my motorcycle. There was an unexpected line at the counter, and I hunkered down to wait. As I was completing the formality and stopped being distracted, I suddenly remembered the exam I was supposed to be proctoring. I sped to the classroom, back from the direction I had come, only to find that the students had given up waiting and had left. I felt terrible. I had made a promise. Someone had depended on me, and I had let him down. I have absolutely no doubt that I made a moral mistake and was guilty. I am as sure about that as that I am writing in English. It is not because “society says” I am guilty. I really am morally responsible for what I failed to do! There are other things I have done about which I have trouble deciding what was right and wrong. If all moral behavior fell into the category of “too tough to tell” like this, moral realism would seem much less plausible, but it does not.
Moral realism says there really are morally right and wrong things; good and evil exist, for real, and it must include the fact that many things fall in between those categories epistemologically. Likewise, tall and short, poor and rich, all assuredly exist, but there is much that is murky in between the clear extremes.
Some asserted that the survival benefits of behaving reciprocally are all there is, and claiming more than this is unnecessary. This view represents extreme moral skepticism and moral nihilism of the kind that only psychopaths believe in practice. Such accounts do not explain morality but explain it away, leaving nothing to account for.
The invited speaker commented that this talk about moral intuitions did not resonate with him. One response would be the 11th century Durham Proverbs: “Blind in both eyes, who sees not with the heart.” A recent class of business ethics class also claimed that there is no actual duty to reciprocate, even when one’s life has been saved, merely a social obligation. Students in other classes strongly disagreed, with just a few exceptions. The business ethics students also said that the only reason they will not commit fraud against their clients is because of “legal consequences” and nothing else. Hopefully, these moral nihilists are an aberration and not representative of their entire cohort.
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