Arrogance (7)

Natural Fact and Moral Imperative

Paul's admonitions in 1 Corinthians to the Greeks who seek natural wisdom and are blind to God's Wisdom are part of the Biblical discussion of the origins of morality. One of the issues in this discussion is the relation between knowing God in nature and feeling compelled by this knowledge to behave in accordance with Divine moral law. In everyone's ordinary experience, there is a disconnect between knowledge and moral behavior. We can know that God exists, that God displays his power in nature, and even that God has broadcast his moral law in the arrangement of nature; but we humans still have to make a decision to honor God and obey that law. And we don't always make the decision. The need to make a decision is the disconnect. The Bible addresses this decision in terms of original sin and free will: we have free will to make a moral decision but, as fallen, we make the wrong decision, yielding to sin. Stepping outside the Biblical framework, the disconnect between knowing and moral behavior is also an important issue in secular philosophy. It is to the secular framework of secular concern about knowledge and moral behavior that we want now to turn.(*)

The modern, secular philosophical discussions of the disconnect developed out of two important scientific advances. One by Newton and one by Darwin. Newton believed in natural theology. Darwin did not. Like most naturalists in the Western tradition, Newton agreed that the existence of the Creator was evident in the design of the universe. Only a few ancient philosophers, notably Lucretius (On the Nature of Things) denied the argument from design. Newton thought gravitational cosmology proved the necessity of God's providence for the stable arrangement of the solar system and the universe. Less than two centuries later, Darwin demurred. Darwinian evolution is based on chance, not design. Darwin understood that using chance or accident as an operational mechanism in evolution explicitly denies design in the explanation of biology. Though Darwinism was initially limited to biology, the notion of chance would soon be extended to the physical explanation of the universe. Darwin's work was largely the end, outside of religious precincts, of natural theology.

Darwinism was soon extended to human morality. Some Darwinists argued that human morality should follow the operation of nature. As suppression of altruism and competition between individuals is a feature of the natural selection process, it is right, and perhaps inevitable ("natural") that both should be (or are in fact) features of human society.   We might call this conclusion the "naturalistic inference". The racism that gripped societies around the globe in the national clashes of the nineteenth century, and was so intimately involved in the wartime ideologies of the two world wars, was evidence of its powerful persuasiveness.

Opponents of Darwinian natural morality made two arguments that have been the focus of most Western philosophical discussion about the relation between natural knowledge and moral behavior. One argument originated with Hume (before Darwin, but in opposition to Newtonian natural theology and morality based on it). Hume argued that there is no necessary connection between natural facts, moral imperatives, and moral behavior. You cannot deduce a moral imperative from a natural fact--an "ought" proposition from an "is" proposition. It is a fact that male lions kill the kits of other males by female lions with whom they wish to copulate. Such infanticide increases the proportion of lions sired by the most powerful male lion. Lion behavior, however, has no imperative for human behavior. Should human step fathers kill their step children, acting like lions, in order to increase the proportion of human children sired by them? Few persons think so and laws in all societies prohibit such behavior. Such a moral inference defies common sense.

Another central contribution to the discussion of fact and imperative was provided by the philosopher, G. E. Moore. Moore argued that what is good--goodness--is separate from any properties of goodness that can be studied by science. Hence goodness cannot be deduced from natural facts, which are the only kind of facts science can study. Moore called the notion that goodness can be inferred from natural fact, the "naturalistic fallacy".(**)

Having divorced nature from morality, secular modern philosophers have removed Paul's onerous accusation from thinkers--and from me--who do not feel compulsion to follow Divine morality from our knowledge of nature or even from our sense that God displays his power in nature. As an adolescent whose reason would not let him follow Christianity into the doctrinal pools of trans-substantiation, I was not religiously arrogant or puffed up, at least according to nonreligious lights. I was just precociously logical. (Aren't all adolescents precociously logical? Perhaps this is a clue to the disconnect?)

But the question still remains, in secular ethical thought, why the disconnect between knowledge and moral behavior. Might arrogance somehow be involved, after all?

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Contents

1. Arrogance
2. Paul's Problem With Greek Wisdom
3. Greek Wisdom: From Homer to Aristotle
4. Greek Wisdom: Hellenism: Paul's Era
5. Paul's Meaning
6. The Weakness of Natural Knowledge
7. Natural Fact and Moral Imperative
8. How Is Moral Behavior Possible?

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*The religious discussion of morality, Divine and natural law, and the springs of behavior continue, of course; but I know little about them. The following articles seem to be good places to start reading:  Religion and Morality, by John Hare (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-morality/), The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics, by Mark Murphy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/), Christian Natural Law, in the article, Natural Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law), and Natural Theology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology).

**I am following the exposition in "Moore's Moral Philosophy" by Thomas Hurka [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore-moral/].

Useful references on morality and ethics: Morality, by Bernard Gert (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/) and Ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics).

Useful references on the "is and ought" issue and the naturalistic fallacy are provided by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_and_ought, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy, "G. E. Moore," by Tom Baldwin (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/), "Moore's Moral Philosophy" by Thomas Hurka (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore-moral/), "Moral Non-Naturalism" by Michael Ridge (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/), "Moral Epistemology" by Richmond Campbell (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-epistemology/), and "Moral Naturalism" by James Lenman (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/).

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Images: Solar System, NASA artists image; Charles Darwin