Moral Skepticism

A short post for today discussing the scepticism we have towards concepts of morality. Now the original purpose of this blog was actually about expressing skepticism towards a number of common held beliefs. In face the name of the blog derives from a moral error theory. It's unusual in that moral skepticism, in comparison to other types of skepticism, seems very popular.

I think the popularity of moral skepticism for non philosophers arises from two main views, or claims:

1) The notion of cultural relativism and moral subjectivity; what one person thinks is moral is different to what another person thinks is moral. In certain cultures we have certain activities that are promoted, some of which would seem immoral to some of us. The claim is often that we shouldn't take some form of moral high ground in assuming our system is better than there's.

2) A rejection of God. This is important because often proponents of objective morality justify their belief on the basis of an arbiter called God that decides the objectivity of morality. For those who reject the existence of a God who explains this objectivity, it might be difficult to think how morality could otherwise be objective.

Taking these main points together, certain people might argue that since morality differs between people, it must be subjective.

I won't discuss responses to this argument in this post (I'm undecided myself actually). Instead I'm going to note a few rather interesting things in play here.

The first thing to note is that this does not mean that one must forsake a notion of morality. Indeed very few proponents of the view would actually conclude from this that morality is a broken notion and that we are free to do anything. It is common instead to provide a debunking argument that explains why we might think that there is some type of objective morality, even if there is not. This is a second order notion; it is independent of the argument of whether morality is objective or not. Note that the subjectivists can claim that their own individual morality exists, but this is usually too weak for practical purposes; most of them continue to believe in a moral system to judge the actions of others, and such a view would not allow this. Common types of debunking arguments are to claim that morality is somehow socially constructed. Perhaps it is just a way for those in power to control us, or perhaps it is induced in order to produce social optimum.

Another thing to note is that moral objectivism does not necessarily depend on the existence of a God. Typically we think of moral objectivity as simply being mind independent. All we'd be saying is that certain moral properties are instantiated in some sense. That an action could in theory take the property of being bad. This does not commit us to thinking that our own view of morality is the correct one. It's certainly possible that we're all wrong. Of course this view also has certain dangers such as moral luck.

My second observation is a comparison to epistemic scepticism. One might be familiar of Descarte's evil demon where Descartes discusses the possibility that all his senses could be manipulated by some kind of evil demon. As a result, he is very limited in terms of what he actually knows as he is unable to verify whether he is being deceived or not. Applying this type of argument, since we are unable to verify whether we are being deceived or not, we are unable to confirm whether or not we have hands. As a result it might be claimed that we do not know that we have hands. Now what I find rather interesting is that a lot of epistemology deals with tackling scepticism; finding some way to maintain our common sense views. When I discuss such notions with others they seem to be on this side. They recognise the argument and understand the logic, but they too wish to deny it. They just aren't willing to accept the claim that they don't know if they have hands. This phenomena is rather interesting. Many people will try and argue against epistemic skepticism but seem willing to embrace ethical skepticism.

I wonder what it is that draws people towards this view, especially given that moral subjectivity in some sense seems completely counter intuitive. What is perhaps equally bizarre is why so many philosophers are so desperate to counter it.