Moral Truths are Eternal and Necessary

 

Grant Sterling responded to members of the International Stoic Forum on the question of 'moral facts.'

On 7/25/16 8:45 AM, Steve Marquis [ ... ] [stoics] wrote:

>
>
> Mark-
>
> Believe me I understand the questions you are raising. Any logical
> construct no matter how sophisticated cannot justify the truth value of
> the starting premises internally. Let's give Grant a chance to catch up
> and give his usual well thought out response.
>
> Live well,
> Steve

All:

I have been busy for some time, and I am leaving
town for vacation (weather permitting) tomorrow, but
here's a short (for me!) answer. At times I'll just
point off in the direction of a side issue--some of those
side issues are critically important and generate thousands
of pages of concepts on their own, but I don't have time to
tackle everything....

First, we must make the distinction between the
foundation of certain principles and the source of our
knowledge of those principles. I may learn the principles
of quantum physics from a textbook, but the textbook author
doesn't _make them true_ by publishing them. By the same
token, there's an enormous difference between the theory
that God creates moral facts and the theory that God teaches
us moral facts. (Of course, you may think God does both.)
Those are two totally different things. {I, personally, think
that God is responsible for having planted within us the
fundamental principles of morality, but I don't think God
creates moral facts. But "how do we learn about moral facts"
is one of the issues I will not tackle here...except to point
out that the Stoics clearly think there is no problem here--
that is, they take it for granted that all humans who are
capable of rational thought are capable of knowing all the
moral facts they need to know.}

So I will confine myself, for now, to the
issue of the origin of the moral facts themselves.
(I will also make no effort to address those who
hold that there are no such things as moral facts
at all, or that "moral" facts are really just non-moral
facts of some sort by a different name. I don't think
either view is compatible with any form of Stoicism at
all, although advocates of the latter have at least made
an effort to try it.)

Rather than attack the issue directly, I want
to mention one more crucial side-issue first. The
natural tendency of people who like to engage in _thinking_
is to continue drilling any problem down to infinity.

Why should I go to the store?
-Because you promised to go.
But why should I keep my promises?
-Because if you don't, then people will be upset with you.
Why should I try not to upset people?
-Because...
Why should I....

Etc, ad infinitum. As I suggested, some people
don't like to think, and don't like to question anything,
and so "Go to the store and get X" is sufficient for them.
But thinking people, seeing how often people issue totally
unjustified commands, demand an explanation for the command,
and an explanation for the explanation, etc.
But at some point this becomes irrational. At
some point you must arrive at a source of justification
for commands that is self-fulfilling. If no source of
action is self-justifying, then the infinite regress is
insoluble for theists, atheists, Stoics, non-Stoics, etc.
So the real question is "what sort of thing justifies
a binding requirement for action?"

The simplest solution is to say "God's
will". But the apparent simplicity of this response
turns out to be illusory. Because any version of this
theory immediately confronts the "Euthyphro problem".
(Feel free to look this up if you want more detail.)
Actually, it's really the "Euthyphro problem_s_"--
I should write a paper some day on all the problems
connected with this issue. But today I'll only mention
two (closely related) points:

1) Does God have good reason for making moral
facts the way He does, rather than some other way?
If you say "no", then it is unclear how those
moral facts can be binding on anyone. If there is no
good reason to forbid rape rather than to command it,
then why should the fact that God has arbitrarily chosen
to forbid it make that authoritative for anyone else?
Of course, maybe this god will punish anyone who defies
his arbitrary choices, but that's not a foundation of
_morality_--"do this because otherwise I'll hit you with
a hammer" may convince me to do it, but will never convince
me that doing it is inherently good.
But if you say "yes", then it seems that the
rules of morality are already rationally required before
God wills them at all, and so we need to ask "what makes
them rationally binding?", and that was the question that
"God's will" was supposed to be answering....

2) Unless we antecedently recognize God as being
good, we will have no reason to recognize his commands
as being the course of moral authority. But, again, this
means that God's goodness must precede his will.

Now more subtle theologians say that it is not
God's _will_ which is the source of morality, but God's
_nature_. But this only seems to solve the problems
above. Really, they remain--especially the second.
Granted that God thinks and acts a certain way due to his
Nature, this is only binding on _me_ if I recognize
God's Nature as being intrinsically good. Suppose that
I believed in Zeus...I mean the Zeus of Greek mythology,
not the perfected Zeus of Greek philosophy. Zeus the
lustful, deceitful, scheming, sometimes short-sighted
super-human. You will get nowhere with me if you say
"Zeus lusts after married women, and deceives them in
order to get them to commit adultery with him. Zeus'
"Nature" is the source of morality. Ergo, it is morally
obligatory that you try to trick a married woman into
your bed."

So let's approach this from a new direction.
Suppose that there are moral facts. Could they have
been different than they are? The "God's will" theory
suggests that the answer is "yes"--if God had willed
that rape was "right", it would have been right. Even
the "God's Nature" theory doesn't deny this--it seems
to say that if God's Nature had been different, then
morality would have been different.
I'll lay my cards on the table. I think that
if morality is contingent, the problem of justification
is insoluble. I have never seen an adequate answer to
the question "why should I make any effort to follow the
moral rules you have described?" which is based on a
set of moral rules that were contingent. In other
words, once you accept the question "on what are moral
rules (moral facts, moral truth, whatever) based?", then
you are doomed. If God commands me to act in a certain way,
I'll take myself to be obligated to do so only if I am convinced
that this command is consistent with the rules of morality
that exist independently of that command. If you tell
me that God tells the truth (or lies), I will feel bound
to tell the truth (or lie) only if I think it is consistent
with the independently-existing rules of morality. If you
say "humans evolved in such a way that they think they
should act in a certain way" or "acting in such a way is
the way that will preserve the human species or spread your
genes to future generations" I will take myself to be bound
to act that way only if it is required by the rules of morality
that exist over and above the evolutionary process. Etc.

So my view is that moral rules are necessary.
Not "Necessary but arbitrary", "necessary through and
through". To take my favorite example: If I make a
promise to do X, then I acquire an (all-other-things-equal)
obligation to do X. But _why_? I think the question is
misguided. Anyone who says "why should making a promise
carry with it any obligation at all to carry out the
promise?" has not actually understood what a promise is in
the first place. Anyone who actually understands what a promise
_is_ will immediately see that it carries with it this moral
force. Anyone who truly recognizes what "life" is will
immediately understand that _ceteris paribus_ it is more
rational to preserve it than terminate it.

So I think that "Virtue is the perfection of Reason",
and that "Reason" includes recognition and proper use of
moral as well as non-moral facts. But these facts are not
created by Reason, or by Virtue, or by God. They are not
created by anything at all. To create something implies that
it did not exist before--moral truths are eternal and necessary.
If you want to say that they exist as part of God's own eternal
and necessary Nature, that's fine with me, as long as you
understand that they are self-justifying. They're not binding
_because_ they're part of God's Nature. They're binding because
that's what moral facts are. We've hit bedrock, and drilling
deeper is both impossible and unnecessary.

[I think the same about logical truths and mathematical
truths. Asking "_Why_ does 1+1=2", on my view, is idiotic.
If you understand "1", "2", and the concept of addition,
you'll see that there's nothing else that "1+1" could possibly
be, and no reason to want any further justification. Asking
"Just because 'if p, then q' is true, and 'p' is true, why
should 'q' be true?" is idiotic. If you ask it (and my students
sometimes ask it), then you haven't really understood "If p,
then q".]

So I think an atheist can be a Stoic, if the atheist
is prepared to accept the existence of eternal, necessary
moral truths. Most atheists I know of won't in fact do that,
because they're hard-core materialistic empiricists who
reject anything that cannot be sensed. But there's nothing in
atheism itself that forbids accepting such a thing. [Sometimes
even Dawkins flirts with such an idea.] Whether the atheist
can reject the heart of Stoic ethics but hold on to enough
other Stoic doctrines (the theory of the emotions, for example)
to be called a "Stoic" is more debatable. Becker, for example,
seems to me to be too far from the core of Stoicism to be a
real Stoic, but that's a difficult call and I wouldn't hold
it against someone (as some people on this List) who thinks that
he's still "in". He thinks so, after all, and he's no idiot.

One last thing. Although the doctrine of moral
facts is, I think, crucial to Stoicism, and although I have
argued here that moral facts are necessary (and non-arbitrary)
truths, some distinctively Stoic ideas are contingent. It
is contingently true, for example, that emotions are caused
by false value beliefs.

Regards,
Grant