Ethics and Moral Reasoning

A Student's Guide

C. Ben Mitchell, David S. Dockery

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781433537707
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Filosofía de la religión

Gay marriage. Embryonic stem cell research. Abortion. Such generation-defining issues loom large in our society and demand a thoughtful response. Helping Christians to interact with our morally confused world, Ben Mitchell challenges the relativism so rampant in the West today. In addition to examining the history of ethical reflection from Moses to Immanuel Kant, Mitchell also incorporates the voices of current Christian ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas and N. T. Wright, proposing a holistic approach to ethics—one based on biblical principles, historical views, today's leaders, and Christian virtues.

1

THE CHALLENGES OF A RELATIVIST WORLD

“Well, that might be right for you, but not for me.”

“You can’t judge one culture by another.”

“Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?”

Most of us have heard comments like those while talking with someone over coffee or at a dinner party. The idea that morality is personal, subjective, and relative is in the air we breathe. It’s part of the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). In a widely used introductory ethics text, J. L. Mackie confidently exclaimed, “There are no objective values.”1 Notably, the subtitle of Mackie’s volume is “Inventing Right and Wrong.” According to Mackie, moral values are human inventions. This is a remarkable claim indeed, but one that seems a commonplace today.

Similarly, in her often reprinted essay “In Defense of Moral Relativism,” American anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote,

We recognize that morality differs in every society, and it is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.2

For Benedict, ethical behavior is just the habits we call “good.” There are no objective, universal ethical norms; there are only the habits we call our ethics. Those habits are relative; they differ in every society.

Benedict was right about one thing—we live in a morally relativistic world. What does that mean? First, it means that if relativism is true, then the study of ethics and moral reasoning is merely a quaint search for dusty, old ideas that no one really believes any longer, a little like hunting for antiques. If relativism is true, it also means that the search for enduring, universal moral norms is futile. But the fact that we live in a relativistic world also means that if relativism is not true, we need to know how to respond to a view that is so pervasive in our culture. And it is not only pervasive; relativism is morally crippling because it relegates ethical discussions to the personal, private, and subjective, and to the realm of mere preference.

What we need to realize is that relativism is not merely an assertion. Oh, some people do assert it, but it is in fact an argument for a particular way of understanding morality. Only by understanding the argument will we be better prepared to respond to the claims relativists make.

The argument for what we might call “normative ethical relativism” has two premises and a conclusion. It is “normative” in that it maintains it is the way things should be. It is relativistic because it claims that notions of right and wrong or good and bad should not be the same for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Louis Pojman, the late philosopher who taught for many years at the United States Military Academy, calls the two premises of normative ethical relativism the diversity thesis and the dependency thesis.

THE DIVERSITY THESIS

The diversity thesis is that notions of right and wrong differ from person to person and culture to culture. This premise of the argument seems patently true if we understand it merely as a description of the diversity of cultural norms and mores. For instance, in most Arabic cultures, displaying the bottom of the foot is disrespectful. In some African cultures, giving a gift with the left hand is an insult. Neither of those practices is insulting in American culture. So it is true that ideas about what is right or wrong differ from one culture to another and sometimes from one person or family to another. As Benedict said, “We recognize that morality differs in every society.” But that is merely a description of the way things are. This premise does not by itself make the moral claim that that is the way it ought to be.

THE DEPENDENCY THESIS

The second premise of the argument for normative ethical relativism is the dependency thesis, which holds that morality depends on human nature, the human condition, or specific sociocultural circumstances, or a combination of all three.

The word depends here implies that one’s views of right and wrong rest solely on one or more of the contingencies just mentioned. So the claim is, first, that what is right or wrong might depend upon human nature. For instance, some people believe that right and wrong are determined by the ability of human beings and other animals to experience conscious pleasure or pain. This view is known as “ethical hedonism.” The ethical hedonist believes that it is always wrong to cause pain and always right to cause pleasure or at least to minimize pain. One person who holds this view is Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who teaches at Princeton University. Because Singer holds that it is wrong to do anything that causes pain to conscious beings, he has become an outspoken opponent of capital punishment and outspoken proponent of vegetarianism. Not only is it always wrong, he argues, to cause pain to other human beings, but because he considers animals to be conscious beings, it is also wrong to cause unnecessary pain to other animals. Because humans do not need to eat animals to survive, causing pain by killing them for food or clothing is immoral. Hence, what is right or wrong for Singer depends on the ability for a creature to experience pleasure or pain.

A relativist might also maintain that what’s right and wrong depends upon the human condition, such as that humans are mortal. Much of our behavior as a species does seem to be aimed at survival. Our mortality—the fact that we can and do die—leads us to avoid certain behaviors and even to ban those behaviors by law. If human beings were like some of the characters, say, in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator movies, we might not have laws against certain forms of physical harm. What would be the harm, for instance, in blasting off someone’s arm with a weapon if the arm would regenerate in a matter of seconds? Or what would be the harm in killing people if they could somehow recombine or reconstitute? Because humans are mortal, we tend to be more or less risk averse. Morality, the relativist might say, is just a response to our risk-averse tendencies.

Or, perhaps, our moral notions are the result of our familial or social upbringing. Maybe our society dictates what we think is right and wrong. We sometimes call this view “cultural relativism,” but it is a species of the same argument that we have been discussing. Since each culture has its own moral code, the most we can claim, says the relativist, is that morality depends upon one’s social conditioning. As Benedict claimed, “It is habitual,” and that is identical to saying, “It is morally good.”

Finally, an ethical relativist might want to argue that our morality—our notions of right and wrong or good and bad—depends on some combination of all three inputs: human nature, the human condition, and human culture. Since every culture has its own views of what constitutes right or wrong conduct, since every culture has its own expression of risk aversion, and since every culture has its own social standards and practices, the following conclusion is warranted, says the relativist: Morality—notions of right and wrong, good and bad, obligation and non-obligation—should differ from culture to culture. Note the inclusion of the word that implies moral obligation: should. This is the way that it should be. It should be the case that morality differs from person to person and culture to culture. The normative ethical relativist claims that ethical pluralism is the best we can achieve, so that the notion that one’s ethical views could be right—everywhere, for everyone, at all times—is mistaken at best and fascist at worst. Moreover, to critique another person’s or culture’s morality is a lack of hospitality at best and a moral assault at worst.

This is the moral world in which we live today. Sociologist Christian Smith, director of the study of religion and society at Notre Dame University, has spent much of his career analyzing the spiritual lives of teenagers and emerging adults. In his 2011 study, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Professor Smith found that 30 percent of the emerging adults he interviewed professed a belief in strong moral relativism, compared with a national survey showing as many as 47 percent of American emerging adults agreeing with this statement: “Morals are relative, there are not definite rights and wrongs for everybody.”3

How do we respond to normative ethical relativism? Well, not with a mere assertion. That is, we should not respond by saying only, “No, that’s wrong.” That would be to respond to an argument with an assertion. Because relativism is an argument, a counter argument is needed. To construct a counter argument, one must either respond to the premises or show that the argument is invalid, or both.

Normative ethical relativism faces some significant challenges. One classic response to normative ethical relativism was offered by John Hospers, who was for many years chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Southern California.4 Hospers suggested that one problem with relativism is its claim that what is right in one group is wrong in another. As it turns out, observed Hospers, we are part of multiple groups. For instance, we share membership in the species Homo sapiens; we also are members of families, churches, geographical communities, interest groups (clubs and athletic teams), etc. Which groups form our moral community, the community that shapes our ethics? Why that group and not another? And just because the majority of any particular group thinks something is right does not make it right. It would be very easy to say, “Cannibalism is right in a cannibalistic culture, and if most of the people in the United States became cannibals, then cannibalism would be right for us.” But is there any reason to believe that just because the majority practices cannibalism, it is therefore right? Is the habit of cannibalism the same as approving an ethic of cannibalism? Majorities can be—and historically have been—wrong. Is the relativist really prepared to argue that if a majority of Americans approved of slavery, slavery would be right?

Another problem with the relativist argument is that moral error is not possible if relativism is true. The relativist, at least a consistent one, cannot say that someone made an ethical mistake. The relativist could break a law, commit a mistake of etiquette, or violate community standards, but she could not commit a moral wrong, since right and wrong are in the eyes of the beholder. Is it really possible that having sex with a child is only a violation of community standards? It seems perfectly reasonable, indeed necessary, to say that child sexual abuse is a moral wrong, everywhere and at all times.

A third problem is that there is no place for moral reformers in relativism. If a community holds that apartheid is morally right, then according to the relativist argument, who is Nelson Mandela to claim that racial segregation is wrong? If relativism is true, Abraham Lincoln was wrong to challenge American chattel slavery, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong to call for an end to racial discrimination.

Fourth, relativism suffers from a fundamental philosophical problem. Remember that the relativist argument begins with a descriptive premise claiming that morality differs from person to person and culture to culture. The argument then claims that this is the way it ought to be. An “ought” claim cannot be derived from an “is” claim. In other words, just because this is the way things are does not mean this is the way things ought to be. Just because some Brahmans in India practiced suttee—the ritual practice of burning widows to death—does not mean that is how the culture ought to function. Just because some Islamist and African cultures practice female genital mutilation does not thereby make the practice correct or morally defensible.

Finally, relativism fails to distinguish between moral practices and the values that underwrite them. For instance, in one culture, exposing the bottom of one’s feet may well be a serious moral insult. In another culture, it may be considered wrong to make a certain hand gesture while driving if someone cuts you off at an intersection. What both cultures seem to value in calling those behaviors wrong is respect for others. It is out of respect for others that one avoids showing the bottom of one’s feet in Arab cultures, and it is out of respect for others that one avoids certain hand gestures while driving. Every culture seems to value respect, even though the reasons for doing so or the persons seen to be deserving of respect may differ.

Likewise, while living on the North Shore of Chicago, I observed that public relations entrepreneurs in that community thought it was proper to retaliate legally if someone stole their brand name or brand logo. At the same time, gang members in the inner city thought it was proper to retaliate violently if a rival gang killed one of their gang members. In both cases, the underlying value that dictated behavior was a form of justice or fairness. The grounds and objects of justice were different, to be sure, but some notion of fairness informed the attitude and behavior of both the Windy City entrepreneur and the gang member.

In his interesting volume The Moral Sense, political scientist James Q. Wilson argued that every culture shares the values of sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty, among others.5 These values reflect the moral intuitions of a common humanity. So, although on the surface moral practices and beliefs may indeed differ, in fact, human beings share an amazingly robust set of ethical ideals across cultures. Therefore, relativism is wron...