Stoicism, Moral Realism, and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts
Stoicism, Moral Realism, and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts
Two posts by Grant C. Sterling. First: Stoics Yahoo Group, January 13, 2015, thread “Three (Types of) Moral Rules.” Second: International Stoic Forum, May 26, 2021, thread “Re: Do You Need God to be a Stoic?” Preserved by Dave Kelly, 2026. Layer: Theoretical Core — Philosophical Commitments. Attribution: Sterling.
Editorial Note — Dave Kelly
These two messages together constitute Sterling’s most concentrated and direct defense of moral realism as a load-bearing commitment of Stoicism. The January 2015 message establishes the structural necessity: if there are no objective moral facts — facts that hold independently of any agent’s contingent desires — then the Stoic project fails utterly. The project requires that harming one’s parents is a reason not to act, whether or not the agent cares about them. That kind of reason cannot be grounded in contingent desire or empirical observation. It must be a moral fact that exists independently. The message also closes the loop to ethical intuitionism: moral facts cannot be sensed, so we require non-empirical access to know them. The May 2021 message adds the modal claim: moral facts are necessary truths, not contingent ones. They have no “source” in the way empirical facts do, just as 2+2=4 has no source. We know them by Reason, in the same way we know mathematical and logical truths. The mathematical analogy is the most accessible formulation Sterling gives of non-empirical necessary moral knowledge, and it connects moral realism directly to ethical intuitionism through the same rational faculty that grounds both.
Message One: If There Are No Objective Moral Facts, the Stoic Project Fails Utterly
Grant C. Sterling to the Stoics Yahoo Group, January 13, 2015. Thread: “Three (Types of) Moral Rules.” Responding to Steve Marquis on whether objective moral rules are necessary for Stoic practice.
Imagine that deciding what to do, morally, is like putting weights on a balance. Reasons to do something go in one pan, reasons against doing it go in the other, and whichever side is weightier is what you ought to do. I do not think that this is exactly what moral reasoning should be like, but it is close enough for the purposes of this thread.
There are at least three very different ways of understanding a moral rule like “Don’t break your promises”, and confusion results when someone enunciates the rule and you understand it differently than they do.
A) Moral rules as describing inherent moral considerations. (What W.D. Ross called prima facie duties.) On this understanding, a moral rule tells you that a moral consideration is present which must be included in your weighing. The fact that an action counts as breaking a promise is, in itself, a reason not to do it. It means that at least one weight will be placed in the “against” pan. It does not mean that the “against” side will necessarily outweigh the “for” side, because there may be any number of other weights being placed in the two pans. But it means that the “against” side is definitely not empty. This is what I mean whenever I assert any fundamental moral rule.
B) Moral rules as exceptionless commands. On this understanding, a moral rule tells you what to do, period — the against pan will always be heavier no matter what. I think there are no true rules of this form, apart from the utterly tautologous ones. Breaking promises is rarely right, but there are exceptions.
C) Moral rules as rules of thumb. On this understanding, a moral rule tells you what usually is right, so that if you need to make a decision quickly you can accept the default. These are partly empirical, since they are based on observations of past weighings of actions of a certain type.
The problem is that Type C rules can only function if you already have Type A rules in place. I can only know whether the “for” or “against” side of the scale won out in the past if I know what things count as weights. Is the fact that something is an act of breaking a promise a reason not to do it? Is the fact that others will be harmed by my action a reason not to do it? I can only build up rules of thumb by already knowing what counts as an intrinsic moral reason. Type C presupposes Type A.
The moral axioms cannot be established by any kind of reasoning at all — or else they would not be axioms.
I care about my daughter. So if some action would benefit me in some way but hurt her, I can see a reason not to do it. But let us say I do not care about what happens to Wanda. So the fact that some action would hurt her does not give me any desire-based reason not to do it. If I can satisfy my desires by exploiting her, why should I not?
There must be some kind of reasons that are utterly independent of my contingent desires. The Stoics think that the fact that I would be harming my parents is a reason not to do something whether I care about them or not. On the other hand, the fact that I have a strong desire to be promoted to second assistant Vice President does not give me a reason to do anything at all.
If there are no objective moral facts of this sort, then the Stoic project fails utterly. If there are objective moral facts of this sort, then we must have some means of knowing them. They cannot be sensed. How do we know them?
Unless we think that there are such truths and that we can access them, we have no reason to try to make progress towards them. We only have reason to satisfy our contingent urges. Unless I have reason to believe that there is such a thing as good health, and that going to the gym will help me towards it, I have no reason to go to the gym in the first place (unless I like the gym itself). The same applies to virtue: unless virtue is objectively good and I can access that fact, I have no reason to pursue it except as a means to desire-satisfaction — which is precisely not what the Stoics claim.
Regards, Grant
Message Two: Moral Facts Are Necessary Truths — We Know Them by Reason
Grant C. Sterling to the International Stoic Forum, May 26, 2021. Thread: “Re: Do You Need God to be a Stoic?” Responding to questions: what is right, what is the source of that, and how do we know it?
I have answered these questions many times.
1) While there is, in each situation, a single action which is right (barring rare ties), there is not a single type of thing that is right. It is not like Benthamite Utilitarianism, where you simply add up quantities of pleasure and the highest total wins. There are multiple roles that generate role-duties, plus the need to take into account maximizing preferred over dispreferred indifferents.
2) This has no “source”, just as “2+2=4” has no source. It is a fundamental, necessary, and unalterable fact about the universe that, all other things being equal, one should maximize preferred indifferents. If you do not see that, or doubt it, then you do not really understand what preferred indifferents are. All other things equal, we should keep our promises — if you do not think so, you do not really understand what a “promise” is. 2+2 could not possibly have been anything other than 4. There is no need for a God to “decree” these things, or for a human society to adopt them, though of course there is nothing wrong with God pointing these truths out to us, and human societies can certainly incentivize right action.
3) We know it by using our Reason, in the same way that we know that 2+2=4 and that from “If p, then q” and “p” we can deduce “q”. This is complicated by the fact that we have developed bad habits since childhood of believing that things that seem to benefit us are “good”, and so we tend to try to deny obvious moral truths when they are inconvenient. But even here — the same man who does not repay a debt and pretends that he has no obligation to do so gets furious when someone else does not repay a debt to him.
Regards, GCS
Corpus Note — Dave Kelly
These two messages together establish the four most important claims Sterling makes about moral realism as a philosophical commitment.
First, from the 2015 message: moral reasons must exist independently of any agent’s contingent desires. The Stoic claim that harming one’s parents is a reason not to act, whether or not the agent cares about his parents, requires that this reason be a moral fact — not a desire-based consideration, not a social norm, not a contingent preference. If no such facts exist, the Stoic project fails utterly.
Second, from the 2015 message: Type C moral rules (rules of thumb) presuppose Type A moral rules (inherent moral considerations). The empirical component of ethics — learning from experience what usually works — cannot get started without prior access to what counts as a moral consideration. This makes moral realism foundational: the empirical dimension of practical wisdom cannot operate without the non-empirical moral facts that give it its standard.
Third, from the 2021 message: moral facts are necessary truths, not contingent ones. They have no source in the sense that empirical facts have sources. Just as 2+2=4 does not depend on anyone’s decree or convention, the fact that one should maximize preferred indifferents does not depend on God’s command or social agreement. It is a fundamental, necessary, and unalterable fact about the universe.
Fourth, from the 2021 message: we know these facts by Reason, in the same way we know mathematical and logical truths — not by experience, not by revelation, not by social consensus. The mathematical analogy is Sterling’s clearest and most accessible statement of how the same rational faculty that gives necessary knowledge in mathematics gives necessary knowledge in ethics. This is the intuitionist epistemology stated in its simplest form, and it connects moral realism directly to ethical intuitionism: both are grounded in the same rational access to necessary truths.
Sources: Stoics Yahoo Group, “Three (Types of) Moral Rules,” January 13, 2015; International Stoic Forum, “Re: Do You Need God to be a Stoic?” May 26, 2021. Author: Grant C. Sterling. Preserved by Dave Kelly, 2026.
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