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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ob4c_iLuTw
As most of my readers know, one of the main reasons I give for being Christian is that it offers a much more coherent view of my overall moral beliefs than does atheism. It is my opinion that answering the question “what should I do?” is far more important than any scientific question. Accordingly, I form my noetic structure around this question.
Now there are many different views that atheists can hold to be sure. Some are realists and many are various anti-realists. But I think it’s an insurmountable problem for them. Sure even Christianity has some weak points, but this is one that atheism has and I think it is demonstrated in this discussion. It’s a discussion, I presume based on the title, that involves only naturalists and deals with morality.
By saying this is a shambles I do not mean at all to impugn the intelligence of the people involved. They are all very intelligent people. But IMO they are dealing with an intractable problem, when they try to reconcile naturalism with the belief that we made moral progress.
In particular, I would point out that I found the comments by Steven Weinberg and Sean Carrol to be very insightful. Weinberg, in particular, made several quite interesting comments that help cut to the quick. For example, at about 1:27:00 after he says he can’t argue with a pro-life advocate who just believes abortion is wrong due to human life being sacred, at which point
Daniel Dennet says: don’t even try and you let time pass and will find that people gradually change their mind by all sorts of subtle forces…
Weinberg cuts in: “but not rational arguments…”
And Dennet does not offer disagreement.
As I listened it seemed that many seemed to agree on some sort of “moral progress,” but at the end it seems that what people understood that to actually mean fell apart. Sean Carrol agreed that views change, but are we closer to the truth? To which Massimo Pigliucci said I thought we agreed there is no truth with a capital “T” regarding morality. From his blog I think Massimo meant that morality is just a matter of peoples own views and not based in reality. I am not sure everyone agreed with that. (But Massimo would know these people better than I do.)
For a realist “moral progress” would mean that societies beliefs better mirror moral truths of reality. E.g., our views of slavery show moral progress because slavery is really wrong.
But if there are no moral truths in reality and morals are just a matter of subjective opinion then what could “moral progress” mean? Does it mean everyone is agreeing with me more? Does it mean everyone just agrees with each other more? So that if it were a Nazi society but there was more agreement with it, then it would be morally better?
I am hesitant to ascribe such positions to the people involved but sadly they had to break for coffee before they could even explain what they meant by moral progress. I am curious how an anti-realist would understand the term “moral progress.”
w
True and Reasonable 
Hi Joe,
I think you are right that this is a troubling (perhaps even insurmountable, although I’m not totally sure about that) issue for moral anti-realists.
I definitely don’t agree that it is insurmountable for atheism though, because as you mentioned the views about morality span the map among atheists. Please watch the short video in my post here to see an atheist who believes moral precepts are objective and real, but not from gods. He even explains how this could be so. You don’t have to agree with him, but I personally see his view as a definite possibility (although I’m not totally sure moral precepts do exist as he explains), just like your view is a possibility. I’ve even explained on my blog elsewhere why I believe Kagan’s view has a higher chance of being correct than yours due to the law of parsimony.
By the way, I understand Pigliucci to be a moral realist (which I mention in my post) and I think you may be reading too much into the capital “T” comment.
Thanks for your comments Howie. I am not sure I missed so many of your excellent blog posts dealing with these issues. I hope you do not mind if I go back and post some of my thoughts on posts from a few years back. I think these questions are unlike current event issues and are always relevant.
For now let me say yes I agree that there are atheists who are moral realists. Whether “relativists” are “realists” is a bit tricky. I think reasonable arguments can be made either way.
I tend to view them as anti-realists because as when it comes to morals they “make it up.” That is we are not discovering morality. Morality is just in our head. But I do concede that it is “really” in their head. That is they do really hold the view that slavery is wrong. But since they don’t think that belief refers to anything in objective reality I am not sure I consider them a realist. I am pretty sure Russ shafer- landau agrees with me but how we label people is not as important as whether we understand the underlying position. But I am willing to concede that issue to some extent but I am not sure that it really saves them from much of the problems that other anti-realists face.
Yes I agree Russ Shafer-Landau is a realist and would have no problem describing moral progress. BTW I think Russ Shafer-Landau is an excellent source for information in this area and appreciate your link to his lecture. I read his book “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil” and some other materials.
I also agree with Shafer-Landau and Kagan that the lawgiver argument is unpersuasive. I also concede that the Eutheyhro dilemna explains why one can believe in real objective morals even without God. I respond to William Lane Craig here:
https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/07/02/euthyphro-dilemma-and-william-lane-craigs-response/
I think there are at least 2 problems that atheists will likely have with believing in objective moral realism.
1) A possible commitment that one should not believe anything without evidence. Now not all atheists believe this. (and I don’t believe it myself) But it seems to be a common view when atheists discuss God. So what is the evidence for objective morality? It seems to me that many atheists may hold contradictory beliefs when it comes to their standards here. I have not heard any moral realist atheists list out the evidence for their belief in objective morals, if you have please let me know.
2) The second argument is what I believe is even more insurmountable. It is the argument made by Richard Joyce, Sharon Street, and Mark Linnville (and myself \o/)
That is let’s assume that real morality is out there in reality. Things really are right and wrong. Given what we know about evolution how is it possible that we can think our moral beliefs reliably track that real morality? Moral wrongness is not something we identify directly by the senses. That is we can say we see people torturing a cat and we think it’s wrong. But we can’t locate the wrongness in the scene. Wrongness has no material manifestation or indicia. Because of this it can not be identified by science. It is also impossible for Natural selection to track it. Natural selection is not able to track truths that have no material indicia as things with no material significance will not effect fitness.
What this means is not that objectively real morality cannot exist but that we have absolutely no reason to think our beliefs are at all reliable if we simply evolved in a naturalistic world view.
These are the 2 issues that I have not really heard any atheists address in any detail. Peter Singer did respond to Joyce and said he thought moral truths were simply self-evident. I think it’s pretty clear they are not self-evident. In fact I don’t think the existence of objective morality itself is self evident let alone that some axiom of it is self evident.
Michael Huemer might be seen to argue against this with his intuitionism view. But I am not sure he really directly addresses this particular type of argument from evolution. Although when I was in law school in the early 90s and he was a grad student I did argue something like this issue with him. And he seemed to think his view was ok. Intuitionism sort of says that all things being equal our intuitions are likely true even before you start reasoning. I think intuitionism is pretty suspect here. For example, as Richard Joyce argues if your intuition is that morals don’t exist or that moral beliefs based on natural selection would be unreliable then you don’t really get anywhere.
As for Massimo I am not sure he is a realist. I asked him some questions in his blog and I am not quite sure what to make of his views. BTW I am an objective realist when it comes to morals and I think my comments demonstrate that.
https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/stoicism-then-and-now/#comments
I think an excellent response to Harris is presented here:
http://thegooddelusion.blogspot.com/p/full-response_30.html
The author is an anti-realist atheist as is pretty clear from his writing.
I am glad to find someone who is thoughtful and willing to work through these issues. I will read some of your posts and give comments as I have time.
Hey Joe,
Wow, that was a jam packed comment and I’m not sure I’ll be able to respond to everything properly. Firstly, I consider my blog a growing interactive web page. Even on my “About Blog” page I encourage people to comment on any post no matter how old, so please feel free to do so.
As far as atheist moral realists not believing moral precepts exist outside of human minds, I believe Kagan in the first 20 minutes of his debate with WLC actually did describe that moral precepts exist outside of the human mind. His analogy to the law of non-contradiction seems to confirm this. I’m not sure about Landau – I’ll defer to you since you read his book.
Yes #1 is actually a great point, and it’s the reason why I remain agnostic about what the correct meta-ethic truly is. I believe there are logical and ontological possibilities though, and that’s what I usually talk about. And I believe evidence is important in beliefs, but a priori reasoning can also be used as well to form what most would consider valid beliefs. Interestingly though, whatever things theists use as reasoning to believe objective morals exist (except simply “gods exist therefore morals exist”) can be used by atheists as well.
As to #2, I agree that this also is a very valid issue. I personally think that all of us, no matter what beliefs we have, suffer from a bigger epistemic problem regarding morals than we do regarding logical or physical claims (although some would argue everything equally suffers from epistemic issues and they may be right). In some ways the epistemic problem seems more troubling for the theistic case, and I at least can’t see how it’s better. It would just be described differently.
Kagan’s analogy to the law of non-contradiction in essence tells me he does believe the basic precepts are self-evident, but given my own understanding of “self-evident” (which I think you read on my blog) I agree with you.
I’m not sure I got everything right above. I tried to be quick and succinct and left some stuff out. You are way more well thought and knowledgable about this subject than any other theist I’ve found and it’s refreshing. While I may not end up agreeing I am sure I can learn some things from you.
“Progress” is a relative concept. As we try to get to a goal, we evaluate where we are relative to that goal and where we were relative to that goal in the past. If now we perceive ourselves to be closer to the goal than we were in the past, we say that we “make progress towards the goal”.
Now, all people have different goals or the same goal can have different meaning to different people. If you and I both have the same goal “to get home” and we are on a road going from my house to your house (which, by the way, is the same road that leads in the opposite direction as well) it is quite obvious that you will make progress towards your goal, and I will not.
To say “we make moral progress” is meaningless unless we specify the goal and determine where we are compared to the goal. E.g. two liberals might agree that society makes “moral progress” by legalizing gay marriage, whereas two conservatives might consider this a “moral degradation”. When two people say “we make progress” it merely means that they share the same goal and they both think that they are moving towards that goal. A third person who does not share the goal may disagree with that statement.
Whether goals are real is a different question. Since nobody knows what reality really is, it’s best to avoid this discussion.
Interesting topic. I plan to watch the video tonight before commenting as to my impressions.
Joe,
I watched the video last night, which was the first time I had watched any of the videos from the conference. It’s definitely worthwhile viewing. I’ll have to catch up on all the others.
I agree that the session closed at an unfortunate point in the discussion, but I think your post focuses too much on those last few minutes. Earlier in the session I perceived a near consensus that moral progress was a combination of alignment with human nature (i.e. our broadly shared moral faculties – Goldstein started with Haidt and eventually Ross tied this to game theory) and cognitive agreement (i.e. social contract, which nearly everybody mentioned at some point). Though nobody there was a realist in the sense of a truly objective “out there” morality, I never got the sense that they were bothered by measuring progress against human nature, mediated through cognitive reflection and moral discourse.
Hi Travis thanks for the comment.
Ok it seems that in editing the blog the link may have gone to the wrong video for a time. I am not sure which edit switched it but I have the correct one linked again. I meant to link the first morning session of day 2.
I didn’t listen to the free will one yet. It is the first aftenoon session of day 2. Free will is not of particular interest to me. Your comments seem to track part of the morning video that I did listen too. I am assuming you may have listened to both but maybe not. My comments here only deal with the morning one. But I will listen to the free will one because that may be of interest as well.
You might understand some of these speakers views better so that you have a better rounded view of their views. But I don’t recall them saying moral progress was better alignment with human nature, then we had in the past. Yes Goldstein began with Haidt noting some feeling that are often to translated to moral views but it seemed she agreed we can (and perhaps should) be “talked out” of some these natural inclinations.
I thought Weinberg made it clear that we really don’t have rational reasons to prefer one set of inclinations to another. Dennett seemed to buttress this point by bringing up the alien civilization analogy and question. Would we have any reason to care about the morals developed by an alien civilization. That question seemed to be left open.
Are you sure that is what they were all agreeing that moral progress is just aligning with our human nature? (and by that I think you would mean human instincts or feelings that Haidt identified.)
Someone just mentioned Game theory at the end but as I recall he barely got the term out before someone said they need to break. I am not sure how game theory was really going to help out when the object of the game seemed uncertain. But again I am not sure of the views of the speaker who mentioned game theory at the end so I wouldn’t know how he hopes to tie it in.
But yes I did get the sense that moral progress seemed to mean agreement. Dennett even said something like all morality is parochial but we should try to adopt views for the largest parish. So it seems in his view that moral progress is getting the largest number of people to agree.
Joe,
It was the morality video that I was referring to. In short, yes, there was much reliance on cognitive agreement but that was building upon a foundation of a “fuzzy” moral sense that existed as a byproduct of evolution (iirc “fuzzy” was often used to describe this). So they see rational thought, discourse and ultimately agreement as the mechanism by which clarity is established.
Hi Travis
I have a listened to a few of the other discussions. They were interesting. But I think everyone’s interests were a bit too varied to really get to the crux of certain matters. I think that is likely the case with this one on morality.
I think they all agree rationality *can* play a role. But ultimately it does not. I think this point was illustrated fairly clearly with the discussion between Weinberg and Dennett at 1:27:00 as indicated in my original post.
As far as establishing moral “clarity” through discourse. I am not sure how they would use that word. I am not sure that they just meant that peoples views are more clear now than they were in the past. Of course, they don’t think there is any real morality that is coming into better focus.
I rewatched the end of the clip. What I’m hearing you say is that Weinberg had a slam-dunk case that nobody could refute even though they wanted to. Is that correct? I don’t agree. Both Dennett and Pigliucci implied that rational argument requires significant time to bring about change and does so through cultural shift. DeDeo challenged why we should think the resulting shift is progress and that led to Ross’ game theory comment (which is continued in the next video, by the way). He focuses strictly on the dynamics as an explanation, but in the course of the discussion they suggest that the persistence of a particular moral equilibrium is due to a better alignment with innate preferences relative to the prior equilibrium.
Hi Travis I have been out a while so here is my late (by blogging standards) response.
“I rewatched the end of the clip. What I’m hearing you say is that Weinberg had a slam-dunk case that nobody could refute even though they wanted to. Is that correct?”
Weinberg stated that people just value fundamental different things. And there is often no rational way to sort these matters out. I do not think anyone even tried to refute that. It seems they all agreed.
If you look at 1:27:00 it is difficult to say Dennett is disagreeing with Weinberg. He is explaining the problem in another way.
As to whether Massimo disagrees I am not really sure what his views are. I am not sure what he means by truth with a capital “T” as opposed to truth with a lower case “t”.
In the next video Ross makes it clear that game theory cant answer whether something is good or bad. And that should not be surprising.
Hi Joe, I found out today my last reply to you at Scientia Salon was bumped because of post limits. So I went looking how to contact you and wondered about commenting at your site. Thankfully this current thread is a great topic for me to reply in!
For anyone else reading this I am a moral anti-realist and had been having a debate about science’s contribution to moral theory.
In reply to your question for me at Scientia: yes, you are correct. While I believe that science can inform moral theory more than many would agree with (including meta-ethics), this does not mean science is replacing or changing the nature of the investigation: Ethics and Moral theory are philosophy. And you are doubly correct that “science can only provide a descriptive account of morality” can’t be a scientific conclusion.
Now regarding your current post here… I really liked the conference that the video came from.
As an anti-realist I will agree to a certain extent with the “problem” you laid out. For the most part “moral progress” will be about greater (more widespread) agreement with general sets of moral norms. So yes, Nazis could discuss and feel “moral progress” if their views became widely accepted. While this may make anti-realism look unpalatable, it has to be remembered that we aren’t saying that such a thing is objective moral progress for everyone, or desirable, just acknowledging that is how everyone will make their evaluation of moral progress: according to an increased desirability of their own tastes.
That said, I think we can be a bit more objective by moving away from generic moral progress and discuss progress in specific values. Let’s take cruelty for example. That is a bit easier to define, with more clear cut criteria. People on all sides of a political spectrum could theoretically define and so discuss whether we have made progress against cruelty and toward kindness as opposed to some abstracted “moral progress”. This would go for other values too such as honesty, justice, productivity, etc.
People might disagree with whether one value is more important than another in a trade off (like one is willing to increase cruelty to improve productivity, while another is willing to lose productivity to reduce cruelty), or which should be liked at all (one may like asceticism and hate hedonism, while another the opposite) but they could arguably come to an agreement which is rising and which is falling.
So moral progress in X becomes a rise in the practice of some specific value (whether considered virtue or vice).
Regarding atheism’s link to anti-realism, certainly not all atheists are anti-realists (Massimo has said he is not, though later considered himself an instrumentalist which seems close). Of course I think atheists and anyone who agrees with Hume’s arguments are more likely to reject objective moral realism.
Hi DBHolmes
Thanks for your comments. I can only recommend your blog “the good delusion” to all of my readers. I appreciate the rigor you used in addressing Sam Harris’s view (even though I, like Harris, am a moral realist) and in fact it was from your blog that I found this video. I enjoyed the video very much as well.
I agree with what you say that particular virtues and values seem clear enough that we might be able to tell progress in each of those areas. Although even there we will get allot of disagreement. For example cruelty to whom? People? Animals? Cute animals? And that is before we even get on to the balancing of other virtues.
I agree that there are many atheist moral realists. It does seem to me that *generally* when we consider the reasons for rejecting belief in God many of those reasons would also lead us to reject real morality. But this is not always the case.
I am not sure what to make of Massimo’s meta-ethical views. In the video he says there are no moral truths with a capital “T”. Someone said he did a review of Harris on amazon where he said he was a moral realist. I also tried to get a better idea of his views in the comment section here:
https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/stoicism-then-and-now/#comments
DB while I have you here, let me ask a few questions about moral progress. Is it moral progress as people agree, or is it moral progress when people agree with *you* in particular? In reading your blog I thought it would be more agreeing with you. So for example, if people had unanimously disagreed with you on a moral issue but then one or two switched to your view that would be progress wouldn’t it? Or, on the other hand, instead of them changing would it be progress, on that issue, if you died?
Now I assume if you changed your mind and started thinking like everyone else that would be moral progress. But would it matter *why* you changed your mind? Like the discussion between Dennett and Weinberg at 1:27:00 where Dennett said just give it time and subtle forces will change their mind and Weinberg interjects “…but not rational argument.” So does it matter whether they are rational arguments that change your mind?
From a moral realist perspective I suppose, it would still be progress if our beliefs better track moral truth regardless of how they were formed. But it would be *better* if our reasoning was one that generally tracked truth. Since as a moral realist we are generally trying to make our beliefs track the truth. When we say that there is no moral truth, it is difficult to see why we would have any care at all about the method we use to reach one moral view or another.
Hi Joe, sorry about the late reply but I’ve been quite busy these days. But more important than an apology: thanks for all the kind comments!
Regarding Massimo, he seems to shift a bit on his meta-ethical views. The last concrete declaration he made (that I am aware of) was in a post at Scientia Salon discussing the current state of his philosophy: https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/my-philosophy-so-far-part-ii/
The relevant quote being:
So a quasi-realist or bounded instrumentalist. I am sympathetic to his vagueness since as I noted earlier I think we can reach some more objective considerations as we get closer to analyzing specific values or traits (I’ll get to your reply later). Would that make me a quasi-realist? However, I would clearly disagree with his idea someone stating something is “wrong” could be stronger than one does not like it, even if it could be agreed that it is because it objectively involves cruelty, dishonesty, injustice, etc.
I have the sneaking suspicion if push comes to shove, he’d have to align himself intellectually with anti-realism. But he’s pretty smart and might make a great defense for those two categories. Right now he seems reluctant to discuss and perhaps a bit annoyed by meta-ethics. That’s too bad because I’d like to see him work that out more.
I agree with your caveat. That could make up quite a bit of ethical discussion from my perspective. Still whether someone intended to inflict gratuitous pain, or whether a being felt it may be less open to interpretation.
Yes, you understood what I was arguing. I suppose it is more convenient if more and more people agree with something, but that would not count as progress to me if it is very different from my own beliefs. And of course the same would be true for them. Those others would view such growth of their position as moral progress, but if/when my (opposing beliefs) grew they would view that as moral deterioration. So moral progress is a relative (or subjective) assessment.
No, people dying is just happenstance. Otherwise we could talk about an earthquake that wiped out some culture we hated as being “moral progress.” People holding the idea may have died, but that does not mean the idea itself has died out based on people giving it up to embrace another which they themselves feel is better (a progression).
One could talk about a moral shift I guess, but that would be more about demographics than ethics.
So yes, if I changed my mind then everyone else would find that progress (as indeed so would I). But you raise an interesting question, which I’m not sure has a straight answer.
My immediate answer would be “no”, and Dennett is right that there could be many paths leading to moral progress while Weinberg is equally right that they do not include rational argument. My reply to Weinberg would be why would that matter? Many ethical beliefs can form and change without any arguments on the subject, just through living and interacting with others. Given that Weinberg is an atheist one would think he’d be a bit more sympathetic, as we can see ethical dimensions in the social behavior of other primates and mammals who clearly are not having discussions about it.
Although it is a much longer discussion, and something I hoped to raise in an essay at Scientia at some point, from neuroscience we can see that there are “nonrational” components used during moral judgment. I don’t think that inherently reduces its value.
I agree that if there were an objective moral code, then it would be seem better if one’s reasoning were the cause of following it. Especially as that would give you a way back to the “right” actions, if you got lost (when life gets messy). Otherwise it was sort of luck that put you on the right path and kept you there.
As an anti-realist I’d still prefer people used reason in combination with their emotions to reach conclusions they feel are satisfactory. Perhaps that is so that there is more consistency in their behavior, or they don’t feel out of control as their mood changes. Reason is used to give perspective across events in one’s life to build a pattern one can recognize/identify with. And of course it is used to hash out differences between choices or people with different expectations.
More importantly, while I would never say it is wrong, I’d rather exclude coercion, deception, or manipulation as tools of moral progress. So a state capable of great mental control over others (North Korea for example) is not delivering moral progress. My thought is all citizens there might feel there is progress, but it is not “real” progress, since it is generally devoid of reason altogether. Basically they have little choice and are just fitting into allowed boxes. In a sense it is like a natural disaster, only a rational disaster, so it is more a moral shift based on demographics (who survives the purge) than moral progress based on ethics.
But I see where someone could mount a strong argument against my position on that.