1517) There is no general agreement how the word "morality" should be used. Some people think of morality as a set of rules laid down by God. Others think of it as a set of socially imposed rules with the function of reducing conflict in society. Others say it is a set of principles about how we ought to live that apply to everyone impartially, or which can be defended by appealing to the interests of people in general.

Many people think that a discussion of this kind, arguing about the merits of general moral principals is either superfluous or else impossible. This is often because they make one of two false assumptions.

One of these assumptions is that there is one set of "true" moral beliefs, which no humane, rational and informed person could reject once he understood them. This view makes moral argument redundant. The other assumption is that moral beliefs are so subjective that no useful discussion can take place between those who differ. (We do not try to argue someone out of his preference for raspberries over strawberries.) This view makes moral arguments impossible.

Many of those who accept John Stuart Mill's claim that "Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof" think that this is sufficient to establish the futility of argument in moral matters. It may seem that, since nothing could count as "proving" one set of values to be "true", it is pointless to argue about morality as it would be to try to persuade someone by argument to prefer one color to another. But this is to take too pessimistic a view. Even leaving aside the extent to which argument about facts can be relevant to questions about what ought to be done, there are various fruitful methods of arguments about moral beliefs.

One method of arguing against a moral belief is to show that it depends on concepts that are blurred or coherent. Someone who believes that homosexual acts are wicked because they are unnatural may be open to this kind of argument. If pressed to define "unnatural" he may find it hard to provide a definition that includes homosexual acts without also including singing at the opera.

Another method of rational moral argument involves the exposure of logical inadequacies. This may take the form of showing that what are taken to be good reasons for holding a belief are not really so. [...] Or it may take the form of exposing inconsistencies in someone's principles. If you disapprove of all abortions, I may ask you to give a reason. If you reply that to take a human life is always wrong, I will ask if you are a complete pacifist. If you hold some non-pacifist views about war, you must either abandon or modify your principle that taking life is always wrong or else change your mind about pacificism. This (very crude) example shows how it is possible to apply legitimate pressure to the moral beliefs of anyone sufficiently rational to be disturbed by inconsistency.

And moral argument has a wider scope than the exposing of inconsistencies within someone's formulated principles. It often takes the form of showing someone that his beliefs have unnoticed consequences that he would find unacceptable. Some general principles used in support of abortion provide an equally good justification for infanticide. Someone who holds such principle, but who cannot accept the consequent rightness of infanticide, is trapped in an inconsistency. The general principle must be abandoned or modified or else the unpalatable consequence must be accepted.

Moral beliefs can be undermined by our responses to their consequences. But our responses are themselves liable to modification either by experience or by the development of imagination. It is a truism that we are able to accept the rightness of actions or policies often only because of a failure of imagination, and experience of their consequences often greatly changes our responses.

Jonathan Glover
Causing Death and Saving Lives: The Moral Problems
of Abortion, Infanticide, Suicide, Euthanasia,
Capital Punishment, War, and Other Life-or-Death Choices (1977)
"Vespertyne", personal e-mail (11/2/1995)

1518) I would expect any intelligent organism that lives in groups to evolve an ability to hold beliefs about right behavior, and to be influenced in those beliefs by myth and ritual. We do not only have beliefs: we make contracts. It is worth asking what cognitive equipment is needed to make a contract. At the very least, it requires language and a "theory of mind": that is, we must be able to perceive other people as beings like ours. Both these qualities are probably unique to humans.

But is there any way in which we can decide, with certainty, which actions are right? [...] If a person is simply the product of his or her genetic makeup and environmental history, including all the ideas that he or she has assimilated, there is simply no source whence absolute morality could come. Of course, this does not exempt us from making moral judgments: it only means that we cannot be sure that we are right.

John Maynard Smith
"Genes, Memes & Minds" in
New York Review of Books (11/30/1995)
[review of Darwin's Dangerous Idea
by Daniel C. Dennett]