Is Morality Natural or Supernatural?

With their focus on finding some divine or transcendental origin for moral laws, metaphysicians often miss the more down-to-earth role moral rules play in the broader morality system. The analogy with our traffic control system helps illuminate this natural but underappreciated aspect of moral laws.

I draw your attention to how the following five natural aspects of the traffic control system interrelate to form a mutually reinforcing whole. In the process, I identify the parallels with our system of morality.

1. Objectives
2. Rules
3. Virtues
4. Roles and responsibilities
5. Rewards and penalties

1. 1.
   Objectives

Traffic control systems arose for the specific social purpose of maintaining safety and convenience. The first comprehensive set of road regulations appeared in England in 1835 with the Highway Act. Road laws resembling those of today appeared in 1931 with the Highway Code (see Ministry of Transport [1931]). They originated in response to the increasing frequency of accidents as more cars appeared on roads. The first traffic laws were introduced in the United States for that purpose in the early twentieth century (see, for example, Powers [2020]. In Australia, the Motor Car Act was formulated and passed into law in 1909 while China enacted its City Traffic Regulations in 1955.

Traffic laws neither fell from the sky nor were discerned from holy writ. Nor is their content arbitrary or based on a lawmaker's personal whim. Regulators design and modify traffic laws with the intention of either improving efficiency or safety or both. They aim for the traffic control system to facilitate drivers getting to their destination as quickly as possible with minimal injury to drivers, passengers and pedestrians.

Just as historical documents record the decisions of groups of people making the first road law conventions, archaeology uncovers the first moral codes devised by ancient human societies around the world. Researchers reveal the human origins, for example, of the Egyptian 42 Laws of Maat, the Hittite Code of the Nesilim, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and the Jewish Law of Moses. Historical documents from more recent times illuminate how the Magna Carta, the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights arose in response to serious threats to social harmony (see Allan [2023]). In essence, the workings-out of agreed moral laws served to protect people's safety and security while securing the conditions for further human development.

1. 2.
   Rules

In the previous section, I illustrated the categorical nature of the laws of the road and the reasoning behind making them unconditional. Achieving the objectives of the traffic control system necessarily requires barring road users from deciding at each red traffic light and speed limit sign encountered whether the objectives of maximizing safety and efficiency will be better realized by disobeying the law in that instance.

This natural deontological aspect of traffic laws is exactly mirrored in the system of moral laws. Everyone obtaining the benefit of being able to rely on others' promises is only possible if it is not morally permitted to break a promise even when overall benefit is maximized in that instance. For both the traffic control system and the morality system, the duty to obey the rules even when the outcome is less than optimal is comprehensible in straightforwardly natural terms. Appealing to gods or some suprasensible transcendent realm is not required for their explanation.

1. 3.
   Virtues

The third element of a well-functioning traffic control system is having road users of good character. I pointed to this aspect in the previous section, highlighting the importance of driver education in inculcating the required habits of the road. Road users are better guaranteed their safety when all drivers drive on the designated side of the road and obey speed limits without thinking.

As noted above, habit formation is also the function of the moral education of our young. For example, the practice of promising will disintegrate, with all its attendant advantages, if promise-makers are prone to calculate in each instance whether keeping a promise is to overall advantage. Moral education inculcates in children the habit (virtue) of keeping promises even in cases where doing so leads to worse outcomes. Likewise, each system performs most efficiently when agents obey the rules out of habit—when they possess the appropriate virtues.

1. 4.
   Roles and responsibilities

The fourth important element of the traffic control system that ties in with duty and virtue is the need for specific roles for the various kinds of players in the system. For example, drivers are required to be licensed before they can take on the role of legal 'driver'. Other roles include that of driving school instructor, licence tester, traffic infringement officer and judge for hearing traffic offences. Each of these roles encompasses specific responsibilities—specific duties—the exercise of which allows the system to operate effectively and efficiently. Holders of each role are also required to exhibit virtues specific to that role. For example, drivers are expected to display integrity in obeying the road rules while judges are needed to exercise fairness in the courtroom.

In like fashion, in the morality system there is a division of labour and specialisation for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Parents have a special duty toward their children for their welfare and moral education. Teachers partake in this role as well in creating virtuous citizens. Religious and community leaders provide moral guidance and act as role models for proper behaviour. Legislators consult, debate and frame laws accepted as just. Judges interpret and apply the laws. Each role is defined by a set of authorities and responsibilities. As with the traffic control system, these roles and responsibilities are created and continually negotiated by human participants for human ends.

1. 5.
   Rewards and penalties

The final integral element of the traffic control system is the hierarchy of rewards and penalties. These aid the learning of roles and responsibilities and help prevent backsliding. For the traffic control system, rewards and punishments include safe driver discounts, fines issued, licence withdrawals and other penalties for traffic infringements. Such actions are designed to both encourage lawful behaviour and deter transgression.

The same system of rewards and penalties infuses human moral practices. At its most basic and informal, rewards and punishments in the morality system take the form of praising and blaming individuals for good and bad deeds done. More formal rewards include the bestowing of bravery medals, national honours and commemorative titles. Formal punishments include fines, expulsion and imprisonment. Adherence to the moral rules is encouraged using a variety of such inducements and penalties. As with the enforcement of road rules, divine or other non-natural intervention is not a manifest feature of the enforcement regime.

A systems approach such as the one outlined above reveals how discerning right from wrong is not about receiving commands from on high or tuning into the whispering of the cosmos. The moral laws—the dos and don'ts—that metaphysicians fixate on is but one aspect of an integrated behaviour-regulation system comprising rules, roles and rewards.

The other key lesson from thinking of morality as an integrated system is appreciating how the three standardly-taught theories in ethics—consequentialism, deontology (duty) and virtue ethics—are not necessarily in competition with each other. Moral philosophers do not need to choose one moral theory while leaving aside the others. As this analogical study demonstrates, this is a mistake. Seeing the traffic control system and our system of morality as the natural product of human beings evolving to live in increasingly complex societies, the mystery as to their origin and source of obligation dissolves.

Each of the three dominant moral theories has something essential to contribute to the story. Consequentialism supplies the warrant for the entire morality system (mutual social benefit) while justifying the presence of each working element within the system. Deontology gives force to the categorical nature of moral rules; how we are obligated to obey even when the outcomes are less than optimal. Virtue ethics emphasizes the importance of habit formation for the efficient functioning of the morality system.

Our obligation to follow norms of behaviour is not only a feature of the moral code and repeated in the system of road laws. It is a natural aspect of many other human activities that require sophisticated co-operation and co-ordination. Games are a paradigmatic example here. Sporting and other kinds of games exhibit all of the system dimensions identified in this essay. Football and chess, for example, consist of roles (player, umpire, etc.), game playing rules (score goal, move king one space, etc.), and a system of rewards and penalties (trophy, free kick, etc.). For the purposes of my argument from analogy, I could easily have chosen a game instead of the traffic control system. Human systems that obligate us in certain ways are all around us. And none of them require us believing in gods, supernatural dimensions or transcendent realities to participate in them.

Copyright © 2026 Leslie Allan