Facts material and moral: persuading with reasons

Prior to 1859, it was almost universally believed, at least in the Western and Middle Eastern world, that human beings were created by a god. This divine creation was though to have happened within the  last 10,000 years. The ancient Roman Epicureans, as reported in the long poem De Rerum Natura, by Lucretius, had hit on a more accurate evolutionary explanation for life on Earth, including our own species, but under the sway of Christianity, allied with its sister religions Judaism and Islam, this idea based on reason was suppressed in favour of sincere belief that ignored reason and evidence. Amazingly, today 42% of Americans sincerely believe that human beings were created directly by the Christian god within the last 10,000 years and that we are not evolved from other earlier animals (Newport, 2014).

At least both this large number of Americans who hold a false belief about the history of our planet and our time on it are agreed that both Darwin and they cannot be right. They know that if Darwin or the his much revised theory from 1859 are right, then their Bible based opinions must be wrong: the facts cannot be both. Similarly, every educated Westerner believed from the time of Aristotle to Copernicus, a period of almost 2,000 years, that he Earth was a sphere at the centre of the universe, around which the sun and everything else circled. They were always all wrong. The facts were never as the 100% believed, and had good reasons to so believe. Scientists today are a bit more cautious, and admit that some of our most powerful theories are either likely to be proved totally wrong or at least wrong part: the whole idea of progress in physics, biology and the other sciences consists in improving on the understanding and correcting the misunderstandings of earlier researchers. Newton was brilliant, but Einstein showed this his theory of gravity was seriously wrong. We have no trouble saying that an entire nation, or every nation, might be wrong in an opinion about the world be live in.

Should moral beliefs be any different? Is it reasonable to think that an entire nation, which we have seen can hold wrong opinions about the position of the Earth or the origins of our species, can not also be wrong in its moral opinions? Since the 1960s, it has become a common belief in some academic circles, although not in philosophy departments where such questions are actually examined, that moral statements are either not opinions that can be true or false, or that they are true if they reflect what an entire nation belief; that is, something is morally right if it is accepted as morally right by an a nation or at least the majority of that nation, and it does not matter if other nations or other times held contradictory moral opinions.

One way to test an idea is to accept it and see what consequences follow. So, lets accept the common relativist theory that something is morally right if a great majority of a society accepts it as being morally right. That something becomes a moral fact, a moral truth, if it is widely enough believed by the members of a society. Slavery is a useful example to work with. Slavery has a very long history, having been practised in most cultures for most of human history. In the United States, slavery was believed to be morally acceptable, even a duty to the superior white Christians (who must truly have been morally superior since that was what was commonly believed), until after the American Civil War. President Lincoln only abolished slavery in the US in 1865, towards the end of that bloody war. More impressive, and less bloody, were the efforts of Thailand's King Chulalongkorn to end slavery in Thailand between 1874 and 1905. What does the theory of moral relativism, the theory that what is moral is determined by what a society believes, say about reformers like Abraham Lincoln and King Chulalongkorn, who thought that they were leading their nations to a better understanding of moral facts? Such reformers are acting against the social norms accepted at the time. However, since what is morally right is those social norms, is merely what is widely accepted in the society, then reformers must be acting against what is moral in their society. That is, the moral relativism theory says that they are acting immorally! Because people like Lincoln, or modern workers for women's right to equal treatment, or for ending racism are against the moral beliefs of their societies, these reformers are acting and teaching what is immoral. This seems to me a very strange result. In fact, it seems a wrong result. But if the result that follows logically is wrong, then there must be a mistake in the process that led to that wrong result: the facts about slavery in the US and Thailand are right. There does not appear to be any flaw in the reasoning, so the only place left to locate the initial mistake that leads to the idea that social reformers like Martin Luther King or women's suffrage activists are acting immorally is the idea that moral right is what a society believes or accepts, which must then be wrong opinion, that is, not a fact.

Moral opinions are at least as hard to support as opinions about the nature of the planet Earth, so it should not surprise that we and our ancestors have been as wrong about moral facts as we have been and surely are about many material facts. On the other hand, we have also made much progress in our understanding of moral facts over the past 2,000 years: the world is a better place than it was when Aristotle and Jesus were walking around, and we have improved greatly on their moral ideas as we have on their ideas about the material world. Different societies and cultures are different times have held very different and contrary opinions about the facts of the world, there is no reason to think that they should do any better on getting complex moral issues right. Nor does the mere fact of there being different ideas determined by cultural factors mean that astrological or Biblical opinions about the material world, its age, composition or whatever, are as true as opinions based on the more solid reasons of verifiable evidence and critical reasoning.

There is, of course, one stunning exception to the usual uncertainty of our beliefs about what is a fact: unlike beliefs about the number of people in a room at AUA, or about the morality of eating meat, or about the age of the universe, or about whether murder is OK, the proofs of mathematics are absolutely certain. But do such facts as that 2 + 2 = 4 have more in common with the opinion that life began on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago, or with the opinion that slavery is wrong? The moral opinion is, like mathematics, more often seen as independent of material facts about the world than is the opinion about when life began on our planet. If we accept that mathematics tells us facts, the facts about moral right and wrong would seem more like those solid, certain facts than they do the uncertain, error prone facts we temporarily believe about the material world, many of which are never actually facts at all, merely strongly held beliefs with more or less support.

I think it is a fact that you should believe moral opinions to be true or false, to be right or wrong. It also seems to me that the opinion that the Earth circles the sun is very well established, with only a very, very small likelihood of being wrong, of this opinion about the Earth not also being a fact. But if you think my opinion about either moral facts or material facts is wrong, please correct my misunderstandings: I ask only that you follow the usual academic practice of supporting your opposing opinions with reasons, not mere personal preferences or unfounded beliefs. But then, why would you bother to correct my beliefs on moral or material matters if you did not think that I was wrong, or more importantly, if you did not think that you were right and had good reasons for so believing?

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Reference

Newport, N. (2014, June 2). In U.S., 42% Believe Creationist View of Human Origins. Retrieved from Gallup website : http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx?utm_source=creationism&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=tiles