Objective Morality Defined

What do I mean anyway?

In #articles

I was asked the following question about my claim that objective moral values exist:

When you say that you firmly believe in objective morality, do you mean objective relative to the human species, or in an absolute sense? And is your primary reason for this belief the difficulty we would otherwise have in holding people accountable?

The quick answer is that it is not relative to the human species, and no it is not due to any difficulty holding people accountable otherwise. The longer answer requires a bit more, and I think it useful to try to write down my thoughts on it. Almost all of this idea is encapsulated in Sam Harris' view of the Moral Landscape, or Matt Dillahunty's view of Secular Morality.

As far as I can see it, all questions of morality have to deal with the well-being of conscious life. John Figdor on the Dogma Debate episode which sparked this, seemed to contrast the notion of well-being with other metrics of morality such as Utilitarianism (i.e. the "greatest good for the greatest number"), Rawlsian "Veil of Ignorance", and Christian Fundamentalism. However, what he didn't seem to realize, is that each of these is a subset of well-being, and offer "rules of thumb" to trying to maximize it. Even the Christian fundamentalist sees questions of morality, ultimately, in terms of well-being - just not in this life. So I find it not a hard stretch to define morality in such terms. If someone has a better usage, please have them put it up, but I haven't seen anything that isn't already part of the larger notion of well-being. Further, every use of the term that I have ever seen matches the perspective of morality centered on the well-being of conscious life.

Once you accept this, either as a given or at least for the sake of argument, then the objectivity of morality naturally comes from the truth that the facts about well-being must derive from the facts of the universe - there must be right and wrong answers to questions about what will maximize well-being, whether we are able to access it perfectly or not. I do not think that the math of well-being is easy, nor is it linear, but I think one can come to some decent approximations. Slavery (i.e. owning other people as property) can be shown, objectively, to decrease well-being on many fronts. It is then quite likely that this is a moral absolute, although I could imagine someone coming up in the future with a derivation that shows that slavery is in fact better for well-being - but I doubt it. In the sciences, all conclusions are tentative, and the conclusions about slavery may be much like the conclusion that the Earth goes around the Sun and not vice versa. Sure, it's tentative, but I can't imagine it ever being overturned, and it would be perverse to think otherwise.

Some moral questions, however, may be more like what happens sometimes in medicine where one may find something commonly thought of as good for you to turn out not to be. This doesn't negate the fact that there are, objectively, things that are good for you and things that are bad for you. It just speaks to our ability to know such things well, poorly, or approximately.

I think the real benefit, however, in thinking in these terms is that it structures the discussion. Any discussion about the moral rightness of a position such as pro-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-war, etc... must be framed in terms of well-being. When it isn't then it is divorced from the real consequences of those positions, and can lead to real harm. The problem with the religious discourse on these issues is not necessarily that they are wrong, but it is that their positions are disconnected from the real consequences of those positions. Or, perhaps, they are framed in terms of well-being but they make use of well-being in an afterlife, which they fail to be able to demonstrate actually exists - amounting to the same problem.

Secular progress in moral domains occurs when there is a reasoned discussion, always focusing on the well-being of conscious life.