Isn't Morality Simply Personal Preference? Part II

Of course, some ethical standards are determined by personal preference or culture.

It seems that we as humans have a tendency to take what we see as 'everyday' and to normalize it to such a degree that any activity that is not "normal" is ethically wrong. This isn't everyone, and in many cultures the "normal" is being degraded, but in general, for most of the world, that which is "normal" is also that which is ethically correct.

However, in a real discussion of ethics, we have to admit that this just isn't the case. Recently, on Science Friday, a group of scientists and ethicists were talking about the role of science in ethics. There was getting to be an agreement that science's role is in observation and experimentation, determining if a particular act is beneficial or detremental to people in general. Then one of the group piped up and said that we can "know" if some things are wrong without having done a study of it, for instance, having women wear burkas as a cultural standard. He said that such a standard is so "obviously" wrong that they don't need a study to determine if it is wrong or not.

The funny thing is, for me, that is exactly the sort of thing that should be studied. Yes, probably most women would find it oppressive. However, in that culture, perhaps women find the burka comforting or safe. We don't know if we don't ask the question. But just making the decision, a priori, that burkas are ethically wrong, is just a cultural presupposition. While forcing a woman to wear a burka who finds it oppressive would be ethically wrong, that doesn't mean that it is wrong for most people. That would be saying that insisting that people wear more than a loincloth is wrong. Our society demands it, others do not. But if a person feels oppressed if they wear more than a loincloth, then to make them do so, is that ethically wrong? No matter what the cultural standards are?

The fact is, there will be different ethical rights and wrongs within cultures. But oppression is always wrong. Injuring another permanently is always wrong. Treating some people one way and ourselves another way is wrong. There ARE moral standards. It is just the application of those moral standards that change.

Perhaps having a law saying that women must wear burkas is wrong. But if there are standards of modesty for both men and women, perhaps it is not wrong. It is something to investigate and to consider.

But for us to even consider such a thing, we need to know what moral standards are, what should and should not be the basis for cultural standards, and then apply these moral standards.

In a sense, C.S. Lewis' argument is weakened because he talks about a general sense of "fairness", but he doesn't tell us what that sense consists of. Just because I think it is not fair that Paul Allen has billions of dollars and spends it on entertainment doesn't make me right. It just means I have that sense. We don't know if there is a universal Moral Law unless we actually see what it is. What does this Law consist of, that everyone can agree on?

I think I have a list of principles that we could work on. Coming up.

A Salvation Distant From Reality

“An essentially legal view of sin leads inevitably to a legal view of salvation. If salvation is primarily about the Father punishing the Incarnate Son on our behalf, then as a judicial necessity our failure to believe in Jesus compels God to punish us. Such theologies see the cross as saving us from the punitive, legally determined wrath of God—God the Son saving us from God the Father. In this view, I wondered, is really the obstacle that must be overcome, and must He overcome Himself for our salvation? Viewing God as vindictive can cause us great damage, particularly if we believe that the physical and spiritual harm we inflict on ourselves through sin comes from God. Confusing our guilt with God’s anger can cause us to fear and flee from Him, which only weakens us further, continuing the vicious cycle.” -Rev. A. James Bernstein

In other words, if Jesus only died to solve our position before God, then justice on earth doesn't matter. And that's strange, because throughout the Bible it is clear that justice and mercy and right living DO matter.

Also, if Johnathan Edwards is right-- as well as Calvin-- God is a monster, needing human sacrifice to appease Him. That's not my God. My God is ready to forgive and has the power to forgive. He is seeking repentance. Jesus' death gave the power for us to repent by giving us an alternative to Satan's kingdoms.

A Jewish View of Atonement and Sacrifice

Italics quoted from Surprised by Christ by Rev. A. James Bernstein

“An Orthodox Jew… stopped to discuss theology with me. He was a very nice and civil fellow. As we talked he asked me, ‘Why can’t God simply forgive sins? Why does he need a sacrifice? In fact, why does He need anything?’
“I explained, ‘God cannot forgive our sins because He is just and from the beginning has provided sacrifices to atone for our sins.’ Leviticus 17:11- ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’
“My interrogator explained that atonement can mean many things and that the Leviticus passage did not necessarily mean God could not forgive sins without blood…. He pointed out that living a holy life and praying is more important than having a sacrifice. He said that because God is Love, he didn’t understand why God’s love could not be unconditional. Second, he thought I had a very legalistic view of God and of His Love, because I believed that God was incapable of forgiving us without a sacrifice.”

Interesting that a Jewish person, whose whole people have had two thousand years of learning to live with God without sacrifices had to explain to the evangelical God’s marginalized viewpoint of sacrifice. Sacrifice is a ritual to reflect the heart of the offerer, just like baptism or the Lord’s supper, or, frankly, weddings. In all of these circumstances the ritual is essential because the ritual mirrors the heart, and without the ceremony there isn’t a fair representation of the significant commitment. But it is the commitment that is the power, not the action. To put all power into the ritual is to bastardize the action—to rip it apart from the spiritual truth.

Even so, OT sacrifices and Jesus’ sacrifice is reflective of a true repentant heart, one that will do all that he can to get right with God. To live a holy life, to act in love as God does—this is the power of Jesus’ death. Without this, Jesus death in meaningless.

Is Inequality in Society Bad?

Notes taken from the podcast, Philosophy Bites. This episode is an interview with Alex Voorhove about Inequality
Italic passages are quotes from Alex Voorhove.

What kind of society has extreme inequalities, for instance, a huge gap between the rich and the poor?

Society of Domination and Envy
One group has all the power, and the lower group has no way of correcting power to meet their own needs.
The uppers and the lowers cannot connect or understand each other.
The lowers have envy and resentment or lack of self confidence or subservience
The uppers have a sense of entitlement and empowerment, that society should be run by them. They want to protect their position from the poor.
Thus, large inequality makes it impossible for the different groups to love each other
“No man should be rich enough to buy another and no man poor enough to want to sell himself.” –Rousseau

Everyone should have enough to have their needs met, and to have dignity before each other.

Do we just want to change the inequality gap, even if it improves no one’s life? In other words, should we take from the rich just so that they become closer to the poor? No, because although inequality matters, how people’s needs are met in absolute terms is more important.

“If you should get some manna from heaven which provides all your needs and someone else gets nothing and are doing very poorly, and there is nothing we can do to move it back and forth between you, then there is some unfairness there. It would be more fair if there were more balance.”

Inequality can matter without it being intrinsically bad. “Suppose that Anne has a moderate disability. She can walk on a level surface, but she can’t climb stairs and she can’t walk around outside. Suppose that Bob has a very severe disability. He can only sit up in bed on his own and he can’t move around on his own. Suppose you have to do one of two things. You can completely cure Anne, who has a moderate disability, restore her to full functioning or you can somewhat improve Bob’s situation so that he ends up, rather than very severely, he is only moderately disabled. And also suppose that both increases are equally valuable, there is an equal increase of well-being for either Bob or Anne. You can help only Anne or Bob. Who would you help?
“Almost everyone who has been asked questions of this kind think, If the gains are equally large to a better off person or a lesser off person we should give the gain to the lesser off person, if we can’t give it to both. This is a preference, in distribution, to those who are lesser off. It doesn’t follow that you believe that inequality is bad in and of itself. It doesn’t follow that you are committed to thinking that if we can’t help Bob it would be best to deny Anne treatment so that things would be more equal. But you can still think that Bob has a greater claim than Anne to a resource because he’s worse off.”

This idea has significant political and economic applications. The poor should be granted resources rather than the rich, if only one can get the resources. On the other hand, the rich shouldn't just have their wealth taken away from them for the purpose of creating a more equal society.

Is Man The Measure of All Things? Part 1

Lewis now is trying to make a conclusion based on his assertion of the Moral Law. I think that his argument for a Moral Law is a good one and pretty solid. Now he is trying to apply universal morality to understanding the nature of reality itself. In this, he speaks of the scientific process. That science is simply about observation and communicating that observation of reality. I agree, that’s the main point of science. Interpretation of observation is less science than scientific theorizing. But observation and drawing rational conclusions from that observation is what science is about.

However, Lewis says that the nature of reality cannot be determined by science. Because it is all about observation, therefore it does not allow for deep interpretation. That is the job of the philosophers and theologians. Again, I agree. Once a scientist says what the nature of reality is, they are no longer performing the observation of a scientist, but instead doing the job of a philosopher. This does not mean that a scientist cannot do both jobs adequately, but we need to recognize that there is a difference.

Then, Lewis says that reality cannot be determined by observation of outer things, but by understanding the interpreters, namely Humanity. This goes back to the ancient Greek argument that “Man is the measure of all things.” That, in the end, the interpreter is what determines reality. Since Humanity is the interpreter, then that is the standard of measure.
Lewis then wants to go on and say that what we understand about Humanity is reflective of the reality. So if all humanity has a Moral Law, therefore that is something that is reflective of the reality of the universe. This is where I think Lewis makes his first misstep.
The only thing we can determine by looking at Humanity is the nature of that which is interpreting, not necessarily that which is behind that nature. If we look through the most powerful microscopes, we can see atomic particles and how they move. In observing their movement, we may be able to guess what the particles are that make up these atomic particles. This is where theories about quarks and such are found. However, we cannot say decisively what the reality is behind the atomic particles. We can make pretty solid guesses, but there are other guesses that are equally solid. And this is the way with the interpreters of reality. We might guess as to what is behind that level of reality, but frankly we are guessing.

Some might say, “Well, we are human, so shouldn’t we know best what the reality governing us is?” In fact, I would argue the opposite. We are human, and thus we have an idea of how our lives OUGHT to work, not how they DO actually work. We are the consummate interpreters and we interpret first and explain later. We have our interpretation in mind when we look at ourselves and we see partly what we want to see, but more importantly we don’t see that which we think cannot exist.

Frankly, we are our own worst interpreters. We have interpreted ourselves before we have interpreted anything else and everything we see about ourselves feed into our interpretation. This has been what psychology has, for the most part, been about. It has been somewhat successful in seeing social aberrations, but it has been terrible at explaining why those aberrations exist. Theology can be seen as a series of cultural assumptions about the reality of life, despite the text one theology is supposed to be based on. The texts only determine the questions one asks of reality, but they almost never determine the theological answers—that is determined by the interpretation of the theologian.

Even so, I think that Lewis’ jump from the interpreter of reality to that which is behind reality’s interpretation is too quick. He hasn’t made his case. He gives me no good reason to determine why we can rely on this interpretation.

Is the "Moral Law" a Law?

Lewis argues that the Moral Law is a Law, in that it is known by everyone as a standard code of conduct. However, it is not a Law like the Law of Gravity, because it is not universally obeyed. He calls this “odd” because everyone sees it, but not everyone does it, at least not all the time. Everyone sees that it would be a benefit to society if it were done, but everyone finds exceptions to living up to it, at one point or another. Lewis stops there, saying that this is all we can really know.

I want to go a little further, however. I believe that the reason it is difficult to live up to is because of two reasons: First, because of what was mentioned before that there is a conflict between a code of what is good for everyone, and that which is good for ourselves. So there is preservation of society, and also a preservation of self, and these two instincts do not always work together. I can either share my chocolate with my children or I can have it all to myself, and I have to make a choice. I may choose to keep it all myself and have my reasons to do so, but it would be more difficult to explain that to my children. I will use moral reasoning to them, as if it were for their own benefit that I was not sharing my chocolate, but the real reason is that I was hoping to eat it all myself. Thus, I struggle with these two principles in my soul—that of benefiting the other or that of benefiting myself.

Kant believed that the benefit of the other is the only pure moral. However, reality is in fact much more messy. I could benefit both my children and myself by sharing the chocolate, because too much chocolate is bad for me, as it is bad for them. But if we all moderated the chocolate, then it is a benefit for both. So if I shared the chocolate, Kant would point his accusing finger at me and say that my motives were completely pure because I gained some benefit from it, both to my health and to my taste buds. But if we look at the many moral choices we make everyday, we find that the benefit to others is not often separated from a benefit to ourselves. Our motives are constantly mixed and often difficult to decipher because we often have more than one motive involved. Thus, when many people make an evil choice, say, like killing all the Jews in Europe, our motives may seem mixed, but how different is that from any other moral decision we make. From the Nazi point of view, the moral choices all look the same. It only looks different if we see it strictly from the Jewish point of view.

Also, exceptions are found because the Moral Law is not singular. Newton’s three laws of motion were found to be contradictory in the context of a black hole, and this led to the discovery of a much more complex set of laws called Relativity. There are still laws, but there are a number of them and it is difficult to determine which law will reign in a particular context unless one really works it out. And whether time slows or not is certainly not intuitive.

It is a similar case with the Moral Law. There is not a single law, but a set of them and given the context that we may be in, they may be contradictory. For instance, there is a law of human freedom, in which adult human beings have the freedom to do as they please, as long as they do not hurt another. But there is also the law of responsibility in which if a human makes an error, they must do their best to correct it. But do these laws not contradict each other? If one has responsibility, then one does not have perfect freedom and the more responsibility one has the less freedom one has. There is a balanced to be reached between these two laws in every life, in each situation, and the conclusions that would be correct may not be intuitive. It requires thought and careful reasoning.

However, most people are not trained in moral reasoning. In fact, most people are trained to obey laws, not to understand and apply moral principles. It has been determined in the ancient days that it is simpler to tell the masses “do this” rather than teach them how to determine themselves what is the best thing to do. However, we find in modern society that we have multiplied the laws to such a degree that we cannot expect everyone to know exactly what it is that they must do. To “do this” turns out to be more complex than simply learning to think for ourselves what the right thing it is to do.

But in education we still do not teach moral reasoning. Instead, we teach the obedience to rules, whatever they may be. This is a fault and a wrong. If, like Calvinists believe, every human is innately corrupt and selfish, then “do this or else you will be punished” is the right way to go, and all we have to do is find the right selfish incentive. However, studies of human nature have found that humanity is more complex than simple corruption or selfishness. We do have a code of right and wrong that we really do want to follow. However, it is too complex for us to figure out, if we are not trained to do it. Unfortunately, those who lead us in morality are just as empty in their moral reasoning. They are no better at making moral choices than the rest of us. Thus, what we are told to do is as morally weak as deciding ourselves what to do.

Isn't Morality Simply Personal Preference?

This is the basic argument that morality is simply what one prefers, not a universal ideal. If, however, all morality is simply individualistic, then it would be difficult to communicate across cultures moral decisions or reasoning. It would be just as difficult to communicate in another language.

However, morality across cultural lines is surprisingly easy. For instance, let’s take a movie. There is the movie Avatar which is a very moralistic film—yet it has communicated clearly its moral reasoning to all kinds of cultures, not simply western ones. As well, very moralistic films such as those made by Japanese directors Maiyazaki and Kurosawa are very moralistic from a Japanese perspective, yet they are easily understood by people from all kinds of cultures around the world, after they are translated.

If morality was individualistic, or culturally based, then such cross-cultural communication about morals would be very difficult. However, even if we disagree on a moral reasoning, we typically understand the argument the other person is making. And the disagreements tend to be in application, not in the basic principles of moral reasoning. No one, in any culture, says that it is reasonable to kill an innocent human being without cause. One may argue about the causes that are justified, or one might argue what a human being is, but the basic principle remains the same throughout all cultures. This is amazing and not easily explained. Some level of moral reasoning must be innate. So the question remains, why?