# The Nature and Purpose of Morality

## Today * Reflect on Nature of Morality * Purpose of Morality * Discussion

## Personal and Social ### **Three aspects of morality:** - **Personal**. Your own personal well-being, mental emotional physical spiritual etc. Virtues, eating habits, thought-life. - **Social**. How you treat others and are treated by others, including, legal status, friends, family, society, etc. - **Ultimate**. What you are living for, ultimate values, how you are preparing for the end of life, the point of it all.

### Examples 1. individual ships, the fleet, and the safe harbor 2. players, the team, the sport itself 3. citizens, the state, the war itself


## Unresolved moral questions Take a moment to consider and write down ONE moral question you are wrestling with. 1. Could be personal. Am I healthy? Good or bad? Should I change this habit? 2. Could be social. Is X right or wrong, permissible or not, am I being treated fairly, am I treating this person well? 3. Could be ultimate. What is the meaning of life? Who is successful? What's it all about? THIS IS FOR YOU. DON'T HAVE TO TURN THIS IN.


## Lord of the Flies - Lawlessness versus moral law - Lawlessness is the "right of the mighty"; might makes right - Moral law is the "might of the righteous"; right makes right - Jack represents lawless power; Ralph represents law, morality, justice, culture - "Civilization's power is weak and vulnerable to atavistic, volcanic passions." (32) 

## Human Nature - Are humans essentially good (who sometimes screw up)? - Or are humans essentially evil (who sometimes cover up)? - Good, bad, good (creation, fall, repentance) - Bad, good, bad (creation, morality, exposure)

## Why Do We Need Morality? - Hobbes: Without morality, mankind is in a constant state (or threat) of war and chaos. - Hobbes: With morality, mankind has civil law, government, security, peace, etc. - Hobbes: The only "natural law" is that man is selfish. Morality = state law. - Golding: Morality = natural law. Morality applies even if no state is enforcing it or can enforce it. - Pojman: Morality keeps society together, relieves suffering, promotes flourishing, resolves conflicts, rewards and punishes.

## Morality Gives us Reasons 1. Morality is a set of reasons why we *have* to live a particular way. Piggy says, "I don't ask for my glasses back... because you're strong, but because what's right's right. Give me my glasses... you got to." (33) 1. Cause and effect explains everything *except* some human actions (example: Q: "Why is the tree lying there?" A: "The storm knocked it over." *Not* "it was tired.") 2. Human actions are explained by the rational relation of "grounds" of action. (Example (Q: "Why are you lying there?" A: "I'm doing yoga". *Not* "The storm knocked me over.")

### Discussion * What is purpose of morality?

### Discussion * What is the significance of the conch? * What is Pojman's interpretation of the main message of *Lord of the Flies*? Is he right? * Your questions?

# The Nature and Purpose of Morality ## Today * The State of Nature? * Natural Law vs. Natural Lawlessness * Discussion

## Basic issue * Is the moral law unreal or real? * Are laws like "human beings do not steal" just as real as laws like "apples grow on apple trees"?

## Peter Kreeft, Are Moral laws objectively real?

## Real Moral Laws On the contrary, all men, in all times, places, and cultures, argue about whether certain acts, both in general and in particular, are morally right or wrong. We argue about objective truth, not about subjective feelings. Therefore, unless all men are wrong all the time in moral argumentation, moral rightness and wrongness are objective. The moral laws define and discriminate more rightness and wrongness. Therefore moral laws are objective.

## Real Moral Laws The very premise that the moral subjectivist uses most frequently to prove his conclusion, namely disagreements and continual argument about morality, proves the opposite. For we do not argue about (1) purely subjective matters, like pains and pleasures, nor about (2) objective matters that are easy to resolve, like counting the pages of a book, but only about (3) objective matters that are not easy to resolve.

I answer that to call moral law “objective” is not to call it a thing or entity, like a cat, but to call it objectively true, like the laws of physics or mathematics. Just as different physical roads lead to different physical destinations, So that it is impossible to get to the Pacific ocean by walking east from Chicago, no matter how subjectively sincere and passionate you are; and just as it is impossible to get an odd number by adding up only even numbers, no matter how subjectively sincere and passionate you are, so it is impossible to get to moral goodness, or true happiness, or beatitude, by choosing evil and refusing good, no matter how subjectively sincere and passionate you are.

We discover moral truths rather than invent them, just as we discover physical, mathematical, or philosophical truths. This is immediately evident in ordinary human experience and needs no elaborate proof. “Conscience” is the usual word for the mental power by which we are aware of, and feel the obligation to obey, Real moral walls. We discover or “bump into” the goodness and badness of human acts as we “bump into” curbs or colors, though not with our material senses. The act of experiencing or discovering a moral obligation is indeed subjective, but the object of the act is not. If it were in would not be an obligation but only an “ideal” to us, i.e. a subjective desire. (My ideals need not be yours.)

## Some Examples of Moral Laws * 'I have not slain men.' (Ancient Egyptian. From the Confession of the Righteous Soul, 'Book of the Dead', v. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics f= ERE], vol. V, p. 478) * 'Nature urges that a man should wish human society to exist and should wish to enter it.' (Roman. Cicero, De Ojficiis, i. iv) * 'Brothers shall fight and be each others' bane.' (Old Norse. Account of the Evil Age before the World's end, Volospd 45) * 'Your father is an image of the Lord of Creation, your mother an image of the Earth. For him who fails to honour them, every work of piety is in vain. This is the first duty.' (Hindu. Janet, i. 9) * 'Nature produces a special love of offspring' and 'To live according to Nature is the supreme good.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. i. iv, and De Legibus, i. xxi)

## Some Examples of Moral Laws (cont'd) * 'I saw in Nastrond (= Hell)... beguilers of others' wives.' (Old Norse. Volospd 38, 39) * 'I have not stolen.' (Ancient Egyptian. Confession of the Righteous Soul. EREy. 478) * 'Do no unrighteousness in judgement. You must not consider the fact that one party is poor nor the fact that the other is a great man.' (Ancient Jewish. Leviticus 19:15)

**Objection 1:** It seems that they are not, for things that are objectively real are agreed to by everyone, eventually. But moral laws are not agreed to by everyone, but argued about in all times and places. Therefore they are not objective. This agreement proves subjectivity. If moral values were objective, there would be an objective way of determining them and settling moral arguments. But there is not. **Reply to Objection 1:** 1. It is not true that subjective things are always argued about. On the contrary, it is only objective things that are argued about. No one argues about private, subjective feelings. No one responds to “I feel well” with, “No, you feel sick.”

**Reply to Objection 1 (cont'd):** 1. It is not true that subjective things are always argued about. On the contrary, it is only objective things that are argued about. No one argues about private, subjective feelings. No one responds to “I feel well” with, “No, you feel sick.” 2. It is not agreed to by everyone is not objective. This is false also. For instance, no discovery of science was agreed to by everyone before it was proved to be true (e.g. the roundness of the earth, or the origin of disease in germs); yet if it was a true discovery, it was an objective truth. 3. Fundamental moral principles are one of the few things that are agreed to by everyone, or nearly everyone. No one believes that murder, theft, and adultery are morally right. People differ only about whether a certain war is an example of murder, a certain tax and example of theft, or a certain flirtation a case of adultery.

**Reply to Objection 1:** 4. Disagreement does not prove subjectivity. If it did but a single person who did not agree that 2+2 = 4 would make that judgment subjective. The reason men disagree about moral values is twofold: their own subjective ignorance and passion, and the objective nature of moral values, which are more complex and demanding than empirical or mathematical facts.

**Objection 2:** Moral law is spiritual: it has no size, shape, weight, or color. Spirit exists in subjective consciousness, not in the objective universe, which is material, having size, shape, weight, And color. What exists in subjective consciousness is not objective. Therefore moral law is not objective. **Reply to Objection 2:** All just exist only in subjective consciousness, including judgments about material things like size, judgments about mathematical truths, and judgments about moral laws. But the objects of these judgments, unlike feelings, are objective. That is why we argue about them.

* **Objection 3:** Moral laws are values. Values are not facts, for they are about what ought to be, or about the obligations we have, not about what is. Therefore moral values are not facts. But what is objectively real consists only in facts. Therefore moral laws are not objectively real, because of the “fact-value" distinction. - **Reply to Objection 3:** If “facts” means “empirical facts only,” then it is not true that was it objectively real consist only of facts, except according to materialism; for the existence of God, other minds, angels, and mathematical truths are all objectively real, but not empirical. If, on the other hand, “facts” means “Whatever is objectively real,” the argument begs the question in assuming that moral values are not facts. They are facts about what our real duties, laws, obligations, rights, and goods are. That is why we can argue about them, and why we argue about them. The "fact value distinction" is not absolute.

- **Objection 4:** Let us analyze a moral situation. You witnessed a murder. You make the judgment that "that act was bad" or "that man is evil." But all that actually happens is that one man shoots another man dead. The value judgment of evil is not in the gun or the bullet or the trigger finger but giving you the observer. "That act was bad" that's really means I have bad feelings about that act. - **Reply to Objection 4:** the analysis does not fit the situation, and less one is a material list. An act of murder has a material quality and data, but it also has a moral quality. It is the act itself to be rightly judged to be evil, not our feelings. If it were our feelings, then"your act is evil” would really mean"my feelings are evil,"which is absurd. We feel righteous, not wicked, when we meet a murderer.

- **Objection 5:** Moral questions are a major part of philosophy’s great classic questions. But it was already admitted that philosophies great questions are “mysteries" rather than “problems,” and that mysteries were questions in which are subjective involvement made definite, final solutions and possible. Therefore moral questions are not objective. - **Reply to Objection 5:** “Mysteries” do not mean totally subjective questions questions in which we are personally involved, though in themselves they were about the objective and universal truths.

### Discussion * Your questions? * Is there a moral law, like mathematical and logic laws?

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