Letting Go of Intuition: An Argument Against Moral Realism

In this paper, I will be discussing Nicholas Sturgeon's article "Moral Explanations Defended." In this article, Sturgeon criticizes an argument made by Gilbert Harman in his book, The Nature of Morality. I will begin by giving an overview of Harman's argument, followed by a brief overview of Sturgeon's criticisms. Then, I will evaluate Sturgeon’s criticisms one by one in an attempt to show that they do not pose a threat to Harman’s position.

              However, before I outline Harman’s argument, I believe it would be helpful to clarify some terms. In this paper, I will be discussing moral realism. By moral realism, I simply mean the idea that moral properties and moral laws are mind-independent things in the sense that they are not human creations and that they exist in the world as something more than mere concepts. To further clarify, a moral realist position would hold that just as there is a law of gravity that is part of the nature of the universe, there is also a moral law which condemns certain action as wrong and endorses others as right. In this paper, I will also discuss moral facts and moral properties. Unless otherwise noted, when I use these terms, I will be referring to moral facts and moral properties in the moral realist sense, i.e., in the sense that moral facts and properties correspond to something beyond human beliefs. This use of these words would stand in contrast to someone making a statement that it is a moral fact that eating beef is wrong in India, if by that statement they simply meant that beef was morally condemned by most people in India.             

Some philosophers may use the term moral realism to describe somewhat different theories, such as those who defend a mild version of robust realism that claims that although there are not mind-independent moral facts, there are still moral facts to the extent that our faculty of reason limits us to certain actions. However, I will not use the term as such, and will make no effort to discuss such theories.

II. Harman’s Argument

Harman's argument is one against moral realism. Harman argues that there is a contrast between science and ethics in that ethics can not be tested in the same way that science can. According to Harman, this is because ethics is immune to observational evidence. Harman uses two examples in an attempt to demonstrate that this is the case. He asks us first to consider a case of a scientist who observes a vapor trail in a cloud chamber and concludes that she has just seen a proton. Assuming she is a competent scientist with a reasonable theory, and that her theory predicted that a proton would be emitted and that it would leave a vapor trail, we can then reasonably assume that the scientist's theory was correct.

Harman also discusses an ethical example. Harman asks us to imagine that we are witnessing a group of children setting a cat on fire. In this situation, we would also make an observation, namely, that what the children are doing is wrong. However, Harman points out that there is an important difference between the two. In the case of the physicist, she observes a physical phenomenon (the vapor trail). In the case of the children setting the cat on fire, when we make the observation that this action is wrong, it is a psychological phenomenon. We do not literally see the wrongness in the action, we feel it. This creates a problem. It might be that this moral observation is actually a result of our perceiving some kind of natural property of wrongness (in the moral realist sense), or it could be that this observation is nothing more than an emotional response.

According to Harman, in the case of the physicist, in order to explain her seeing a vapor trail, as long as his theory is a good one, we must assume that there really was a proton. In the case of the children setting the cat on fire, we could explain that observation without assuming anything about the physical world. The fact that an individual believes in certain moral principles, and that setting a cat on fire goes against them, would by itself explain the person making the observation that the action was wrong.  We do not have to assume that the individual's moral principles correspond to any natural facts; the moral beliefs alone of an individual could easily explain that individual's moral observation. That means that, whether or not the action had a natural property of wrongness (in the moral realist sense), we would make the same observation, and thus, such observations cannot be used as evidence for the existence of moral properties.
 

III. Sturgeon’s First and Second Criticisms

Nicholas Sturgeon responds to this argument by claiming that Harman's example is far too narrow and undeveloped. Sturgeon claims that we have observational evidence for moral principles beyond our intuitive moral judgements. Sturgeon claims that moral properties can (and often do) explain things that happen in the physical world. For example, Sturgeon asks his readers to consider the actions of Adolf Hitler.

                                    Suppose we were to allow that Hitler’s being morally depraved – a moral fact

                            about Hitler’s character – plays a role in explaining why Hitler did some of the

                            things he did. Then, if an observer, noting those actions, were to think, “What a

                            morally depraved person,” it seems that since the depravity helped produce the

                            actions, and the actions helped to produe the belief, the depravity is relevant to the

            explanation of the belief. So, Harman needs to deny that the depravity played any

           role in producing the actions. (243)              

        In a sense, Sturgeon is correct. If Harman is right, it is true that moral facts would not be able to influence the physical world. And it is also true that if moral facts were to influence the world, for example, if Hitler's moral depravity would have caused him to murder millions, then we would have evidence for moral properties. Furthermore, most would agree with Sturgeon that Hitler's moral depravity played a large part in his actions. However, I believe that Sturgeon is switching between two different definitions of moral depravity. It is obviously true that Hitler was a morally deprived man, in the sense that he was a cruel, ruthless, unmerciful mass murderer. It is also quite clear that these personal qualities were at least part of the cause of Hitler doing the things that he did.
        However, this is not what Sturgeon tries to establish. Sturgeon is not simply trying to establish that Hitler had certain personal qualities that we would call morally deprived which lead him to murder millions, Sturgeon is trying to claim that Hitler's being depraved is a moral fact. In order to discredit Harman, Sturgeon would have to show that Hitler is morally depraved not only in the sense that most people are disgusted by his actions, but also in the sense that there are moral properties in the world that make Hitler's actions depraved in the moral realist sense of the word. However, the very fact that Hitler was a cruel, ruthless, heartless individual would have led him to do the things that he did. In order to explain his actions, we need only make assumptions about his character. We do not need to assume that his character traits violate any kind of moral laws (in the moral realist sense).   
        Sturgeon makes another similar argument in which he claims that moral properties, such as injustice, clearly influence the world, and that we thus have evidence for their existence.

                Injustice, like poverty, can provoke rebellions. And it is hard to see how moral

properties like decency and injustice could have these effects unless they were real features of

the world. Many philosophers also find it hard to see how they could have such effects in          the natural world unless they were themselves natural properties. 244.

        Again, Sturgeon seems to be right in one sense. It's pretty clear that the concept of injustice has tangible effects in the world. When governments are overthrown, those doing the overthrowing often cite the injustice of the previous regime as the justification for overthrowing it. Furthermore, it seems fair to assume that the overthrowers truly believe that the former government was unjust and that this belief lead to their rebellion. However, none of that would seem to entail that it was a moral fact (in the moral realist sense) that the former government was unjust. The very fact that those who overthrew the former government believed it to be unjust, and that they believed that unjust governments ought to be over thrown, would have lead to them overthrowing the former government. Whether or not it was a moral fact that the previous government was unjust, the rebellion would have still happened. Therefore, we can explain this occurrence without assuming any kind of moral realist facts.
       

Sturgeon’s Third Criticism

Sturgeon also has a third argument against Harman. According to Sturgeon, Harman is too strict in his criteria for accepting moral observations as evidence for moral properties. Sturgeon says that Harman is making a mistake by asking the question of whether or not we "need" to conclude that there are moral facts (in a realist sense). Sturgeon says that we should instead ask whether it is reasonable to come to these conclusions.
        Sturgeon says that it is at least reasonable to conclude that there are moral facts (in the realist sense), based on two different reasons. The first might be called an appeal to common sense. Sturgeon basically says that it seems very plausible to many people that there are moral properties, and as a result, this gives us at least some basis to conclude that it might be reasonable to conclude that there really are moral properties.
 

Many such explanations strike most people as very plausible. It is commonplace

to explain people's by appeal to moral states of character, good and bad, just as it

is commonplace to hear social revolutions - some of them, at any rate- attributed

to the combined effects of poverty and injustice. The characters in Plato's   

Republic argue about whether being a just person makes one's life  better or

worse; though they disagree about what justice is, none of them doubts that justice

is the sort of trait that could have this kind of effect. (244).

While it is true that the existence of moral properties strikes most people as plausible, that does not in its self show that they exist. Even the blessing of the legendary philosopher Plato does not hold the power to make a claim true. However, it's understandable that Sturgeon could bring up the fact that to most people the existence of moral properties is almost taken as common sense. If there really were no moral properties, as Harman claims, this fact would seem to call for an explanation. To be fair though, many philosophers have proposed theories explaining why evolution or social pressures could lead most people to believe in moral facts, even if there were no such thing. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into these theories in detail. None the less, the fact that the existence of moral facts seems plausible to most people does not by its self show that there really are moral facts.
            Sturgeon offers a second argument to show that while we may not "need" to believe in moral facts, it is at least reasonable to do so. Sturgeon claims that if we do not only require an explanation for any occurrence to be reasonable, but also require it be necessary, then we would have to reject the physicist's judgment just as we might dismiss the ethical judgment an individual might make after seeing a group of children set a cat on fire.
               
                    The problem though, is that a closely parallel and equally plausible line of thought

        would lead to a similar conclusion about the case that Harman intends to contrast

                with [the example of the burning cat], involving the physicist and the proton. Giving her training and the theory that she has internalized, the physicist would have thought, "There's a proton," at the sight of a vapor trail, whether the trail had been produced by a proton or not; so it looks as if assumptions about the proton are not needed, after all, to explain her observational judgment. Thus, we don't on this understanding of the examples get the contrast between the ethical and the scientific case that Harman was looking for, for we end up skeptics of both. (245-246)

            I believe that Sturgeon is missing some very important distinctions between these two examples. I will grant, as Sturgeon claims,that we do not necessarily need to admit that there was a proton in order to explain the physicist's observation. However, I believe that it is still far more reasonable to accept there was a proton based on the physicist's observation than it would be to accept that there are moral facts based on the observation a person makes when seeing a group of children set a cat on fire.

The difference is a matter of cost. When the physicist crafted her theory, assuming she is a competent scientist, it would have been based on a mountain of scientific experimentation by those that came before her. The fact that her theory was based on so much evidence, and that her theory predicted a proton that would produce a vapor trail, and that a vapor trail did occur, makes it very likely that there really was a proton. In order to explain this vapor trail without assuming there really was a proton, we would have to assume that by mere coincidence an experiment that was designed to produce a proton that would in turn produce a vapor trail did not produce a proton, but happened to produce a vapor trail anyway. While this is of course possible, it seems exceedingly unlikely. Furthermore, we would also have to reject the mountain of evidence that lead the physicist to believe that her experiment would produce a proton. Again, the experiments of her predecessors may have been flawed and may have given her false information, but again, this is unlikely, especially considering that the predicted vapor trail did indeed appear. And still, despite this, if the physicist is a good scientist, she will probably not assume that it is one hundred percent certain that she really did observe a proton, but would rather simply acknowledge that the hypothesis that there was a proton is the most likely hypothesis, given the evidence.

              In comparison, let’s consider the case of an individual observing a group of children setting a cat on fire. If we were to try to explain the observation that the action was wrong without assuming that there are moral facts in the world, what would the cost be? As Harman himself said, all we would have to assume is that the individual making the observation grew up in a society with certain established moral principles which the individual has internalized and which would condemn setting a cat on fire. This is not an unreasonable assumption. This is especially true because if that individual grew up in almost any country on earth, he would have been exposed to and would have internalized a set of moral principles that would have lead him to condemn the action of the children setting the cat on fire as wrong (in the moral realist sense). Therefore, we can be almost certain that this individual will make the same judgment after witnessing a group of children set a cat on fire. This stands in contrast to the example of the physicist, who would have only made the judgment that there was a proton if there was also a vapor trail. Again, the vapor trail may have been a coincidence, but it would be quite unlikely for a vapor trail to have appeared by coincidence.  The individual witnessing the group of children set a cat on fire has no equivalent to the vapor trail. There is not something he is waiting for which a mountain of evidence tells him should only be there under certain conditions. Rather, his views will necessarily cause him to make the observation that setting the cat on fire is wrong.

              However, Sturgeon might have something to say about this line of thought. He might admit that the previous scientific experimentation that the physicist based her theory on is difficult to disassemble. However, a parallel argument might indeed be made in defense of the ethical example. Sturgeon might argue that, while it may be true that the person seeing the children setting the cat on fire would have made the observation that it was wrong, whether or not there really was a moral fact about the matter, that does not necessarily mean that the observation made by this individual is incorrect. If his moral theory is indeed a correct theory, though he would have necessarily made the judgment that the children setting the cat on fire was wrong, he would have been correct none the less, just as the physicist would necessarily conclude that there was (with a high degree of certainty, though not necessarily) actually a proton.

              It seems that to get around this problem, we would have to show that the moral theory of his society is mistaken, or at the very least, lacking in support. Because the example of the person witnessing the children setting a cat on fire does not give us any information about the moral theories of the individual witnessing the event, we cannot deal with the claims of any particular moral theory to respond to this problem. However, we can take a more general approach.

              We could argue as Harman did that the fact that we make an ethical observation does not mean that there are necessarily moral facts about the matter. It might only be an emotional response, and as we hold certain moral principles, we would make this same observation anyway. Based on this argument, it would seem that any justification for moral facts would be circular. In order for an individual making an ethical observation to be able to tell whether he is simply having an emotional response or whether he is actually perceiving some moral fact, he would first require a well-defended theory that is able to show that some things are wrong or right in the moral realist sense of the word. However, any individual would first need to make ethical observations in order to establish a well-defended theory of morality; and because any individual cannot tell whether or not their ethical observations are true perceptions of moral facts or simply emotional responses, no individual would be able to come to a well-defended realist theory of morality.             

Conclusion

              In this paper, I have tried to give a fair and accurate account of Harman’s argument against the testability of moral properties, as well as give a fair and accurate account of Sturgeon’s responses to Harman. I believe that I have shown that Sturgeon’s objections to Harman are not worrisome. As Sturgeon claims, it is true that in order to be consistent with his theory, Harman would have deny that things like injustice or moral depravity have tangible effects in the world. It is also obviously true that such things do have tangible effects in the world. However, this is still compatible with Harman’s position. Harman can easily side step the problem by allowing that actions or personality traits which we view as unjust or morally depraved have tangible effects in the world, while denying that that this injustice or moral depravity corresponds to moral realist facts about the world.

              Furthermore, I believe that Harman can easily get around Sturgeon’s other criticism, e.g. that the requirements Harman proposes for making judgments would also force us to abandon making scientific judgments. It is true that we never one hundred percent need to assume that a scientific principle is correct based on experiment, but if we give up these scientific assumptions we must deny a large amount of previous scientific experimentation and also accept the occurrence of bizarre coincidences. On the other hand, if we give up assumptions about moral facts based on our ethical observations, we need only assume that the individual making the judgment has certain ingrained moral principles, and that the theory which underlies these principles is mistaken. And unless there are stronger objections to Harman’s claim that ethics is immune to observational evidence, both assumptions seem very reasonable.

References

Sturgeon, Nicholas. “Moral Explanations Defended.” Contemporary Debates in Philosophy.

Dreier, James. Blackwell publishing, 2006. Pg. 241-263. Print.

Harman, David. The Nature of Morality. Oxford University Press, 1977. Print.