Morality -- the Usual Suspects

Now, I want to turn to the question I ended the last post with: What might moral facts be like, if there are any? Or if there are no moral facts, what are we doing when we talk about whether it's fair for Maggie to do all the housework or whether sex between two men is immoral or whether abortion is ever permissible?
In answer, I want to present several familiar models of the subject of moral discussion. These models will not constitute an exhaustive list -- I will be adding others later -- but they are the most familiar.
Before we go on, it's important to recognize that when people disagree over the morality of a particular action, they may disagree on one of two issues: they may disagree on an issue of moral principle or they may actually agree on the moral principle, but disagree about the non-moral facts of the case. For example, Maggie relies on a moral principle that the adult members of a family, who reap the communal benefits of family life should (all else being equal) be contributing equally to those benefits, and she assumes that Peter is not contributing anything like an equal share. Peter could dispute the principle, or he might dispute the claim that he is not contributing equally. He might point out that he actually does a lot more housework than Maggie credits him with or he might argue that he works longer hours and brings more money into the household, thereby evening out his contribution to the family or he might point out that all else is not equal -- right now he's on crutches and simply can't do a lot of the chores he'd otherwise be obligated to do. Disputes about non-moral facts may themselves be hard to resolve, but the nature of these facts is not in dispute, nor is there any reason to doubt their factuality. Suppose that Peter and Maggie agree on the principle that equal contribution to the family should be measured by time spent contributing to the good of the family. The question of how much time each spends on the collective good of the family (versus his or her own projects) may sometimes be difficult to determine down to the last minute, but it's clearly a factual matter, and one we understand how to investigate. If there is any question about what kind of facts people are discussing in moral arguments, it must be a question about moral principles.


1. The Divine Command Model. When people dispute about what is just or unjust, right or wrong, permissible or impermissible, they are actually disputing about what God commands. If God commands X, then X is right by definition, and if X is right, then by definition, God has commanded it. Say that Fred believes in some moral principle, P, and Suresh denies P. If Fred is right, what makes him right? According to this view, God's decision to command P is what makes him right. If Suresh is right, what makes him right is that God never commanded P (or any other commandment that entailed P). According to this view, there is a definite fact of the matter whether P is true. If there is a God and if he commanded P, then it is true, quite apart from what any of us may believe about P. It is possible that everbody who has an opinion is wrong about P.

2. Cultural Relativism: The Language, Law and Custom model. According to this model the question "is X morally right" is like the question "are double-negatives grammatical" or "which side of the road is it legal to drive on" or "is it polite to belch after a good meal to show how much one has enjoyed it? Someone who naively believes that his own language and dialect, his own country's traffic laws and the manners of his own milieu are the only language, the only traffic laws and the only manners might well feel that these questions have definite answers, but anybody with a little sophistication will recognize that the questions are ill-formed. The answer to the question "Are double negatives grammatical?" is "It depends on what language you are speaking: in French and Chaucerian English, yes; in 21st century standard English, no. Is slavery moral? On this view, the question is equally ill-formed. Slavery was moral in ancient Athens and in the antebellum South, but not moral now in any developed country. What makes double-negatives ungrammatical in 21st Century English is the fact that all or nearly all the speakers among those regarded as native speakers of standard English, feel that it is ungrammatical. In Chaucer's day, such speakers' grammatical sense told them that it was grammatical -- therefore it was grammatical. On this model, disagreements about what is right for us, can be determined by finding out what my community's moral sense regards as moral. In fact on this view, if you and I disagree about slavery, and if we belong to the same community, the only thing we disagree about is whether our shared society regards it as immoral or not. If we belong to different communities, then we really have nothing to argue about -- we are as confused as two people arguing about whether it's correct to call my family pet "dog" or "chien."

3. Subjectivism: The model of personal tastes. Is spinach yucky or not? There is no answer to this question. Some people like spinach and will find it pleasant to eat. Others dislike it and will find it unpleasant to eat. Those who find it pleasant are no more right about spinach than those who find it distasteful. Unsophisticated people (e.g., children) might imagine that when they dislike spinach, they are correctly perceiving its "yuckiness" and that those who like it are benightedly failing to perceive this yuckiness. As a result of this misunderstanding, they might argue fruitlessly about it, but in reality "spinach is yucky" does not explain or justify one's distaste, it merely expresses that distaste. You and I can both admit that spinach is yummy to me and yucky to you with no contradiction. There is no sense in arguing.
On this model, if I say "homosexuality is wrong" and you say "homosexuality is perfectly OK", we are not actually disagreeing. One of us has a negative attitude toward homosexuality, while the other has no problem with it -- and that's all there is to it.

In my view, none of these three familiar models is correct. In the next post, I'll start presenting problems for them. Do I have more promising models in mind? Yes, and we'll get to those pretty soon.