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Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

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In every language with which I am acquainted, normative statements are treated as having truth-values, just as factual statements about the natural world. Because normative statements do not refer to natural phenomena, and hence cannot be supported or contradicted by empirical observation, positivist philosophers (e.g., A. J. Ayer and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein) hold that applying truth values to them is simply a naïve error. To say "giving to charity is good" does not mean "it is true that giving to charity is good," but rather something like "hooray for giving to charity," or "I believe in giving to charity." If this were so, then it would be possible to disagree about the nature of the good, but it would be impossible to adjudicate such disagreements using the philosopher's tool of reasoned argument. Perhaps for this reason, most philosophers have mostly rejected the positivist treatment of ethics in favor of alternatives in which moral statements, in accord with common usage, do indeed have truth values.

So we can indeed argue about which moral view are true and which are false. This creates another problem. Let us assume that we never accept a moral belief unless we deem it true. Are we then obliged to respect the moral beliefs of individuals with different beliefs, knowing that they are false? If I believe that shaving the day after my father's death is a filial impiety, and you believe that it is not, must I tolerate your false belief, or am I obliged to correct your error, or to persecute you for fostering false moral beliefs? Most philosophers seem to believe that moral disagreement is akin to scientific disagreement: the truth is very hard to attain, popular expressions of moral truth are likely to be naïve and wrong-headed, bigotry and persecution of those with differing moral sentiments is a poor way to settle disagreements, but through sustained intellectual and reasoned discourse, moral truth can be attained.

Thus it is that most philosophers hold to ethical theories that are "universalist," in the sense that there is only one true set of moral principles, and it is the philosopher, as expert in the field, to discover the content of that true set of moral principles. If, for instance, we discover that cannibalism is morally prohibited, the fact that humans have practiced cannibalism for tens of thousands of years is no more a problem than our believing the big bang theory of the origins of the universe, despite the fact this theory corresponds to origins story in any known society. Moral philosophers, like natural scientists, thus tend to hold a "universalist" meta-ethical theory, in which their role is to discover moral truths and convey these truths to the naïve public, whose members lack the expertise to arrive at these truths unaided.

The justification of the physicist's arrogance in believing to have a access to truth unavailable to the casual folk theorist is the success of physical theory in developing an increasingly powerful and universally accepted set of physical principles. Unfortunately, the philosopher has no such justification for asserting a special relationship to moral truth. There is no cumulative moral philosophy. Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas are read today not just as historical reliquia, but as living document from which new insights can be drawn. The succession of great moral philosophers are read and appreciated in much the same way as the great novelists or painters---each has his own brilliant insights, ignored or contradicted by the others.

Perhaps, then moral universalism is not true. Perhaps folk morality is qualitatively different from folk physics or folk psychology---quaint fictions that are trumped by the findings of the experts. Perhaps some form of moral relativism, in which individuals can disagree on the content of morality in a manner that cannot be adjudicated through a careful examination of the evidence or because they differ concerning matters of fact that, if resolved, would lead their moral differences to evaporate. This is a highly unpopular idea among philosophers, because then it is not clear if there is any role for a reasoned investigation of morality at all. De gustibus, as the saying goes, non est disputandum. More important, if we relinquish the notion of a universal morality, then must we not accept a unvarnished moral relativism in which there is no real right or wrong, but only differences in what people believe to be right or wrong. And does it not follow from this that since our moral beliefs have no status privileged by our superior expertise, education, or scholarly dedication, are we not obliged to tolerate moral beliefs and practices that we consider vile, abhorrent, and disgusting? The answer philosopher David Wong gives to these questions in Nature Moralities is in the negative.

Wong is well aware of the low standing any sort of moral relativism holds in his profession. "Moral relativism," he says in the opening sentence of the book, "is overwhelmingly a term of condemnation, frequently of scorn or derision..." Wong's alternative to universality, which he calls pluralistic relativism, holds that "there is no single true morality. However, it recognizes significant limits on what can count as a true morality." (p. xii) The reason for these limitations is that morality is the product of the evolutionary history of our species, serving the role of social cohesion by endowing all, or at least most, members of a group whose survival depends on cooperation with a set of common commitments, expectations, and conventions that promote group solidarity. Wong's explanation is clearly dependent upon the facts of human existence, and is far from the sort of empirical blindness that is favored by many philosophers. Wong shows in this book that he has read widely and wisely in many areas of the social and behavioral sciences, and is often as inspired by a scientific finding as by a brilliant philosophical argument.

Wong shares with Gilbert Harman, Philippa Foot, and a few other philosophers, a naturalistic conception of morality. Because I am a behavioral scientist, this naturalistic conception likely accounts for my virtually complete agreement with Wong as to the nature of human morality. However, I would have chosen different grounds for my basic support of pluralistic relativism. Where Wong (like most philosophers) spends most of the book discussing the relationship of his views to that of other philosophers, I would have spent more time outlining the content of the moral universals that prevent relativism from degenerating into subjectivism or conventionalism. This was done years ago by Donald Brown in his brilliant book Human Universals (1991), which is an anthropological investigation of communalities and differences among moral rules across dozens of societies. I would also stress the commonalities in the moral teachings of the great religions of the world, deriving from the fact that the religions that survived the process of Darwinian cultural evolution did so because they stressed social harmony and cohesion. For an exposition of this theme see, for instance, David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society'' (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Wong's central defense of the proposition that there exist more than one true morality is the existence of moral ambivalence, which is the fact that we can disagree with someone about a moral point and yet respect the position of the person with whom we disagree. I do not have much sympathy with this defense. I can disagree with someone whom I respect, but that does not mean I must recognize some validity to their position. I can also disagree with a position that I believe is wrong but I respect because I also believe that I may be proved wrong and my opponent right. But I do not respect a position that I know is wrong. I actively disrespect such a position.

I believe that pluralistic relativism is best defended by stressing the naturalistic aspect of human morality. Morality, like language, is the product of the coevolution of genes and culture that characterize our species. Both the universality of core human moral universals and the diversity of concrete moral practices are the product of social evolution and social dynamics. The idea that there is an ideal moral realm of which concrete ethical systems are more or less imperfect realization simply has no credible support in either Reason, science, or history.

I hope there is a bright future for this and related efforts to bring moral theory from Kantian and utilitarian ruminations to the realm of the real. I find little the moral universalists say to be of great interest, except that their critiques of one another are often cogent and insightful. By contrast, it seems to me that the sort of virtue theory first proposed by Aristotle and revived in recent years by G. E. M Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen to be of great philosophical importance, and interacts fruitfully with pluralistic relativism.