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Truth in ethics and natural law
Introduction: moral claims and truth.
What is truth? said a doubting Pilate. But what did he doubt? There are a number of possible candidates.
He was interviewing an alleged political dissident in one of the many of the interminable and violent rifts which seemed to characterize Jewish affairs. Did he doubt that in the shifting world of Palestinian politics he would ever come to know the truth? That is an historical or political doubt to be answered, if at all, by cunning in Realpolitik.
He was engaged in a profound conversation about this world and the next and what really counts in human life. Did he doubt that any human being could ever know the truth about such things? Jesus had said that he had come to bear witness to the truth and so this last is possibly the closest to the mark but, for sure, he did not have the doubt that we find in contemporary philosophy which, simply stated is that truth does not apply to ethical claims. This doubt, at first pass, looks a little odd.
The first thing we must do in this pass is to dismiss the idea that ethics consists only in a set of commandments. Ethics, we might more accurately say, is the reasoned study of good and bad, right and wrong. Once we look at it in that way, we seem to be surrounded by straightforward claims that seem to be either true or false and that are clearly ethical in that they paint a picture of what we might call “a life well-lived” by commenting on the human condition in ways that seem highly relevant to the values guiding how one ought to live.
(i) No greater love has any of us than this than that he or she should lay down life for the sake of friends. (John 15.13)
(ii) It is no profit to a person to gain the world and lose his or her own soul.
(iii) You should love your neighbour as you love yourself
(iv) It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you but your failure to appreciate theirs (Analects of Confucius I.16).
(v) In choosing for myself I choose for all humanity … I am responsible for myself and for all humanity …In fashioning myself, I fashion humanity JPS Existentialism is a humanism 396
(vi) You are responsible for your own birth even though you did not ask to be born
In each of these remarks we are offered a profound thought about human beings, their worth and the values that should inform our behaviour even though none of these things straightforwardly or flat-footedly commands us to do anything. We are therefore brought face to face with the idea that ethics is not a discussion that aims at truth and falsity but that it is a discussion elaborating our tendency to go “Boo!” Or “Hurrah!” at our peers it is a reflection or expression of our approval rather than a reasoned inquiry into something that can be discovered to be thus and so for instance God’s commands about how human beings ought to behave – the basis of what is called natural law theory in theology.
The status of moral claims
Before we start we should be clear what follows from establishing that there are universal moral truths. It follows that a person ought to do this or that in a given situation no matter what that person feels inclined to do because moral claims are absolute – they do not depend on how you feel they are just baldly true or unconditionally true. This is reflected in the way we talk as can be seen in the following example.
Sally knocks over a cyclist when she is driving. She ought to stop and help or at least see if the cyclist needs help. Now, if Sally were to say, “Why ought I to do that?” we would most likely say something categorical like, “Well, you just ought, because it is the right thing to do!” We might appeal to Sally herself by saying “Well how would you feel if it happened to you; would you like to be left lying on the road?” In the second case we are implicitly appealing to the golden rule: Do as you would be done by but we are appealing to it as something absolute or unconditional. If somebody persists and says “Why should I?” then we might go further and say, “What kind of world would it be if everyone had that attitude?” but more likely we would just throw up our hands and say something like “Honestly, some people!”
Our response indicates that we think there is something wrong with Sally, and that she ought to behave differently and, if she says she does not care and that she will act as she pleases, we think that she ought to care. But where does this absolute, categorical, “ought” come from? And how can we ever say to another human being “No matter what you think, you ought to X.”
If truth does apply to claims in ethics, then we are on just as solid ground as if somebody said, of John Howard, “I don’t believe he is a political animal, he is just a nice man” and you replied, “Hello!” or “Get real!” This is the right kind of unconditional remark about the right view of a situation and it is either true or false (Howard is or is not a political animal). It is subject to arguments for and against which may indicate a conclusion one way or another. Notice two things about this opinion of John Howard:
First, it is a judgment about a person; and
Second; it relies on a certain kind of facility or experience in human interactions.
Arguments against ethical truth
The idea that ethical or moral claims could not be straightforwardly true or false is a product of a dominant school of Western philosophy called empiricism. Empiricist scepticism about truth in ethics is built on three arguments.
Argument 1. There is no moralPerception
1.1 You can perceive that something is true or false by using your senses.
1.2 You cannot perceive goodness and badness by using your senses.
1.3 That something is good or bad is neither true nor false.
The senses in premise 1.1 are those involved in a thought like “that orange is green”, “that smells rotten”, or “that feels rough” where you use one of your senses to tell you whether something is true or false. This might involve training and complex skills as when, for instance, you look down the microscope and observe “that is a colony of staphylococci”. But there are also statements that are straightforwardly true or false that do not depend on the classic five senses, or at least not in any simplistic way. “I think we are all getting very tense about this and I wonder why” might tell us a lot about a meeting between friends. “If you can’t see that her father is being cruel and abusive then you just do not understand what it is like to be a teenage girl” might depend on understanding family relationships in a way that some people don’t. The same applies if, for instance, a friend asks “What is wrong with dumping your girlfriend by email” and we go “Duh!”
In each case something is going on which somebody just cannot see (in a clear meaning of that term). It is interesting that what is going on has to do with relationships and the way human beings feel and the way they treat each other in a related way to the John Howard case. Both cases concern the type of knowledge you develop in social and personal life. Which brings us to the next argument.
Argument 2. Truth informs you but does not move you.
2.1 No truth about the world moves a person to act; a wish or desire is also needed.
2.2 Moral claims should move you to act or feel a certain way. therefore …
2.3a Moral truths are not like other truths
2.3a is not the only possible conclusion to the argument, we could round it off by adding the following premise:
2.3b Moral claims intrinsically engage somehow with our wishes or desires.
And then concluding:
2.4 Moral claims move us to act.
But can we defend 2.3b?
When we launch from the idea that ethical understanding (reflective understanding of moral life) arises from what in social and personal life means something (Williams) it starts to look plausible that moral claims are intrinsically the kind of thing that we care about or that engages with our wishes and desires in a way that moves us. We might then assimilate the response to a moral claim to the response to a missile hurtling towards your head – the correct response is unquestionably to duck. “But”, one might say, “not if you want to die.” Of course that is true but we tend to take it for granted that avoiding death is the normal response of a well-adjusted human being unless there are certain extreme and unusual circumstances. This example suggests that we might look for a quality close to truth but also closely related to health or well being that attaches to the moral claims that we ought to respect and use to structure our adjustment to the world and other people.
When we look at the remarks with which we began we see that many of these have that quality and it can be brought out by explaining just why we might say that they are true.
You should love your neighbour as you love yourself is true in the sense that we are social creatures who depend on each other for the support and cooperation that gets us through life. Relationships with others can, however, be undermined by people who hate themselves and take out their bitterness on others. It is therefore true that, in order for life to go well, you should love your neighbour as you love yourself. This is absolute in the sense that if someone says “But why should I want my life to go well?” we ought to reply “Get real” or even, at a pinch, “Hello!”
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you but your failure to appreciate theirs There is a huge amount of human desperation, resentment, and suffering caused by people who have convinced themselves that nobody truly appreciates them and that they are going to teach the world to take notice of them. This saying therefore captures a very important truth about the kind of attitudes to self and others that allow a person to benefit from associating with others and fashion good lives without a dysfunctional ego getting in the way. To not incorporate this truth into your life is a sign of stupidity rather than a smart move in the social and personal domain.
Argument 3. People make differentmoral decisions about the same facts.
3.1 Evidence about the facts determines a decision about what is true or false.
3.2 Faced with the same facts people make different moral judgments. Or
3.2’ Different cultures make different moral judgments about the same facts.
3.3 Moral claims, unlike decisions about facts, are not true or false.
These arguments depend on the idea that the facts declare themselves to everybody in the same way but moral judgments are individual (or group) judgments about a situation. Thus, it is argued, different people can come to different moral conclusions and not contradict one another. But at least one famous philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has noted that morality and ethical inquiry involve a certain way of looking at the world (as do religious beliefs). Throwing the world in a moral light brings to the fore certain features which are closely related to the ways that we act and the relationships we form. Think of two examples. Some people, particularly doctors, can see the human body as a complex machine which may need to be adjusted so that it works smoothly. This scientific gaze can obscure the fact that the human body is a person’s body such that the person involved looks at us, speaks with us, feels things based on what we say and do. Realising these things engages us ethically with the person concerned not as an object requiring certain adjustments. At that point the way we respond to the body in front of us changes and becomes infused with an awareness of that person’s life story and relationships and we realise that our actions are part of that life story.
In fact some of the things we say about people are, taken literally, quite untrue but nevertheless they tell us a lot about the person concerned.
He is a predator and the wounds he inflicts on young hearts and minds sometimes cause scars which last for years.
This comment may tell us a lot abut the person concerned but a cardiac surgeon would search in vain for those scars. Ethical truths, we could say, tell us about our ways of relating to each other and the effects of those interactions on us. What is more they frame those relationships and interactions in the light of what makes life go well for critters like us. But this is the thrust of a view of ethics with a long history and a clear position on truth in ethics.
What is goodness
I have noted that moral theorists with religious convictions often derive systems of ethics from natural law. By this they mean law arising from basic values laid out in writings that are believed to capture God’s intentions for humankind. Most such writers are intellectual descendents of Aristotle through St Thomas Aquinas. On this view human moral choices are justly subject to praise and blame because they are the responsibility of the agent who makes them and they either do or do not promote human well-being in the most complete sense.
Therefore theistic thinkers generate recommendations or commandments based on God’s plan for human life (which is that it should be full of goodness or fulfil its potential). Naturalistic thinkers like Aristotle do the same thing on the basis of what tends to make life go well (but they claim no divine inspiration for their knowledge of what makes life go well). It is not surprising that both theistic and naturalistic thinkers agree about what made for a good life given that (ex hypothesi) for the theists, God equips us with a mind that responds to truth and goodness and can chart a rational path for life in the world.
One major division in theology concerns whether the human mind can glimpse God’s truth unaided by God’s explicit revelation in scripture or whether it is incurably fallen and a misleading guide. I am with Saints Paul and Thomas on that one in that the human mind is not sufficient to understand the truth of God’s creation and redemption but can point us in the right direction in a number of ways.
If that is right, we can see what makes for true goodness and a fulfilled human life by using our minds to think critically about the human condition (even though attaining a good life requires grace and depends both on the reality of your spiritual life and the sincerity with which you express that life in your doings with others). In fact there are two claims which can be shared by moral thinkers whatever their theology.
(i)Human beings have natural capacities that show us what it is to live a good human life.
(ii)A person showing excellence in these capacities is living a good human life.
(There are further questions about whether anybody can do that unaided by grace and whether the goodness of a natural human life is other than that of an eternal life.)
Taken together these two claims allow us to conclude that there are laws of a more or less general nature that describe human beings and that these laws yield substantive theses about well-being and virtue. That is all that a plausible natural law approach to human ethics and jurisprudence requires. The truths, we might say, governing our ethical lives, are truths that are derived from a correct view of what it is to be a well functioning human being who unlocks the spirit of joy with which each of us is potentially indwelt.
I would argue that this orientation focused on what it is to be truly human in all its fullness leads us to a pair of underpinning values that should guide our conduct. They are the values of belonging and the value of individual integrity and, I will argue, they are not separable. The dyad often appear in Western moral and political philosophy as the contrast between communitarian and individual/liberal conceptions of justice but to make the case that they should not stand opposed to one another, I will examine an apparent difference between two approaches to ethics that of pakeha and Maori as it appears in New Zealand debates.
As gross generalisations we might baldly state that Pakeha values are those of an individualistic, metallic, and post-agricultural society. Maori values are relational, pre-metallic, and hunter-gatherer society. These are fundamentally different in that Pakeha values focus on individuals who make their own decisions, seek their own satisfactions, control their environment by using technology, and carve off bits of that environment for private or exclusive use. Maori values, on the other hand, focus on a human group whose needs and survival are tied to the fate of the group, whose relation to their environment is more a matter of working with it than just imposing on it mechanisms of production that give reliable results. In the former case we achieve best by attuning life to the balances in that environment and enjoying it. The other set involves commodification rather than stewardship or partnership. There is, therefore, a certain affinity between the first set of values and the implicit humility of Theistic values that place us as participating co-creators with God and instruments of grace in our dealings with the world and each other.