Editor’s note: R. Scott Smith has graciously allowed us to republish his series, “Making Sense of Morality.” You can find the original post here.

Introduction

Now let’s shift to explore objectivist options for naturalism (i.e., ethical naturalism) within moral cognitivism. These views reduce morals to natural facts, so that scientists can measure them empirically, whether that be physiologically, biologically, chemically, or otherwise. There are no intrinsically moral properties. Furthermore, moral statements are about facts concerning (1) objects thought to have moral value, or (2) moral actions.

Options for Ethical Naturalism

Here are some strategies for reducing morals to natural facts. Morals are:

1. What most people desire or approve;

2. What an impartial observer approves;

3. What maximizes desire or interest; or

4. What furthers survival.

First, all these kinds of things are descriptive in nature. But, that seems to lose the normativity of moral principles and virtues. How then do we get the moral ought from what simply is the case descriptively?

Morals need to be identical to natural facts. Yet, these strategies face problems. Consider (1): While what most people desire could be good (such as being loved), it also could be something clearly immoral. In the early 1800s, most people in the Deep South in the U. S. desired to keep slavery as an institution. Similarly, in the 1960s, what most white people wanted in that area was segregation from African-Americans. Yet both policies were clearly wrong.

Alternatively, while most people there did not desire to end racial discrimination against African-Americans, nonetheless Martin Luther King, Jr.’s efforts were right to try to do so. We also could look at others examples where what most people desired, or approved, was wrong, such as anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, or apartheid in South Africa.

How about (2)?  Besides the problem of how to get the normative moral property from what is descriptive, (2) raises the prospects of just how impartial anyone could be. All of us are shaped and influenced by a wide range of factors, including our worldviews. If someone is a naturalist (or a Buddhist or theist), would that person really be able to set aside all that conceptual framework to be impartial in the needed ways? Additionally, it is possible that what an impartial observer approves of still could be immoral.

Regarding (3), the same issues explored above with the southern U. S. could repeat here. And with (4), what furthers survival could be immoral. Arguably, the Nazis aimed to preserve the purity (and thus survival) of the Aryan race, but in so doing they would kill off those they deemed to be “defective.” Also, on the basis of (4), some acts of genocide could be justified. After all, if morality is what furthers survival, why should the weak survive? Yet, justice often requires defending the defenseless against those who are oppressing them.

Cornell Realism

All these ethical naturalist options are realist; they affirm that morals are real, yet they are nothing but natural kinds of things. There is another ethical naturalist option, called “Cornell Realism,” and developed by Richard Boyd (b. 1942), Nicholas Sturgeon (b. 1942), and David Brink (b. 1958). Like other naturalists, there are no intrinsically moral facts. Still, our ethical beliefs (such as Hitler was morally depraved) are justified in light of their coherence with our whole body of beliefs, which is shaped by naturalism. For them, we do not have direct access to moral or other kinds of facts; we always access them through our “conceptual grid,” or interpretive framework. Our moral beliefs and theories give us approximations to the truth.

Later, I will address this coherentist idea more. Still, we already have seen some commonalities with Kant’s views. The question will be if we can access reality at all on such a view. For now, notice that for them, moral facts still are natural facts, and though we conceive of them as moral ones, what is moral is just a matter of our interpretation. If so, a people could conceive of murder or rape as right. But, we clearly know such interpretations would be wrong.

For Further Reading

Richard Boyd, “How to be a Moral Realist,” in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 5

R. Scott Smith is a Christian philosopher and apologist, with special interests in ethics, knowledge, and seeing the body of Christ live in the fullness of the Spirit and truth.