Objective Morality

A Matter of Complexity

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In a recent Dogma Debate Episode, we have a debate between the position of objective morality as espoused by Matt Dillahunty and subjective morality as espoused by John Figdor. I firmly believe in objective morality, and thought Matt did an ok job, but I disliked the directions the conversation took most of the time. The biggest problem I saw with John's argument was that he said that there is a fundamental difference between social sciences and physical sciences, and that knowledge in latter can be considered "objective". He then argued that questions of morality are more like the former, and can only be discussed subjectively. He argued that we can't get outside of our biases and opinions to be objective about questions of morality, and thus it is the result of opinion. He contrasted it to the objective engineering reality that a spring has a finite, measurable, and specific breaking point - which can be written in pounds or some other force.

The issue is a matter of complexity. There is no fundamental difference between sociology, economics, and physics. Different methods are needed because the level of complexity, levels of uncertainty, and the limits of our techniques dictate this. Although moral questions are complex, and challenging, that morality has to do with the well-being of conscious creatures is true by definition. As such, all such questions connect to the real world, and have real-world consequences, and we can have knowledge of these moral facts as we have knowledge in any domain of rationality.

Even something as direct as the breaking point of a spring has more complexity than John is willing to admit. It is not a single number, but depends on temperature, the history of the spring, and other things. These are things that one can possibly quantify, but there are complexities still not entirely understood. Moral questions may suffer from the same uncertainties as even the least quantitative social sciences, it doesn't change the fact that there are objective moral facts in principle. The problem with John's position, as I see it, is that he can never possibly say another moral viewpoint is wrong - even the most horrendous acts. These other viewpoints are just unfashionable. Such thinking is dangerous, I believe, and leads to a kind of moral paralysis.