Three Views on Morality

How do you think about your morality? If you are like most people, you probably have a fairly strong sense of right and wrong. For example, nearly everyone agrees it is morally wrong to hurt people for fun, it is wrong to defile things sacred to you, and so forth. And some things, like the Sandy Hook shooting, are obviously terribly, horribly “wrong” to virtually everyone. Likewise, other events, such as this story of a high school beauty queen giving up her crown to a friend who was bullied, seem to the vast majority as “good” and “right”. Yet, what is it that is grounding these judgments?

Despite being guided all the time by values that most would consider to be moral in some way, it is also the case that people rarely talk about what is, exactly, meant by the "moral". Even the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that, “’Morality’ is an unusual word. It is not used very much, at least not without some qualification”.

I hope this blog helps you reflect on your moral code and gives you a way to categorize it in relationship to other perspectives.

The first position I will call “moral absolutism”. Moral absolutism is the idea that there are moral values that exist in the universe at large that transcend any (human) locality and could in theory be discovered (or have been discovered). The “Light versus Dark Side of the Force” in Star Wars offers an example of moral absolutism. Most supernatural religious perspectives, it seems to me, would generally offer flavors of moral absolutism, at least those who understand the supernatural in terms of the belief that God is real and is synonymous with the Good.

The second position can be called "moral universalism". This position makes claims about nature/human nature regarding “the good” that transcends the local/cultural context. However, unlike with moral absolutism, the moral universalist (as I define it here-this is more my conception than one generally agreed upon in the literature) does not see morality as something that exists or can be discovered to exist independent of human justification/reason giving. Rather moral codes are seen as constructed by humans, based on human reasoning and argumentation and staking out value claims. In this view, there is an element of subjectivity that is not present in moral absolutism, along with the view that morality did not exist prior to living beings making moral judgments.

The third position is moral relativism. Here, every moral code is seen as constructed in its local/cultural context and one cannot apply judgments from one context onto another. A statement recently offered by a colleague in a discussion I was having on a list serve offers a nice encapsulation of this position, “All justifications are local shoulds. There is only one universal should:  Respect local shoulds, and refrain from imposing your should on others”. Moral relativism, at least in its modern flavor, emerged out of the work of cultural anthropologists, who found so much variety in the experience of being human, in what humans value, and all the damage done by self-righteous, self-serving nationalism that they came to the conclusion that all judgments are culturally-based rationalizations.

Although each of the three positions has strengths and problems, I find the moral universalist position the most appealing, practical and workable as a system. When I was a kid, even though I was not religious, I would have probably been more of a moral absolutist. Right and wrong just seemed to me inherent features of the universe. But I did not really think about it much. Then, in college, I learned just how much I assumed was “true and good” was really a function of my local cultural context and upbringing. I also realized how complicated it is to make universal claims about values given all the diversity in cultures, and, as such, I moved heavily toward moral relativism. However, over time I came to view extreme moral relativism (i.e., all belief systems are equally valid, except the belief that they are not) as clearly untenable, inconsistent and practically unworkable.

Several years ago, I started asking myself, What is my ultimate justification?, and started to intentionally search for values that might transcend local cultural contexts and be fruitfully applied to all humans. One such document I found was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which made the claim that all humans have “dignity” and that human rights and protects stem from that claim. Many, many countries/cultures from all over the world have signed on to this document and it is arguably the most consensually agreed upon set of claims humans have ever developed.

Another powerful value I found that resonated with me was the World Health Organization’s quest and mission for the improvement of human “well-being” at the biological, psychological and social dimensions of existence.

Finally, I see the institution of science writ large as offering a pathway to truths that transcend local human beliefs. Science, for me, is really about what some call epistemic values, which are values about accuracy and a commitment to the truth (or at least a commitment to eliminating falsehoods). I call this value "integrity".

These three broad values ground my moral universalism. Putting them together, I have found that the following can serve as an “ultimate justification”:

Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.