Morals, Metaphysics and Naturalism
1. Introduction
Allan, Leslie 2026. Morals, Metaphysics and Naturalism, URL = <https://www.rationalrealm.com/philosophy/ethics/morals-metaphysics-naturalism.html>.
The purpose of this essay is to present an argument for a naturalistic explanation of moral laws. This argument purports to show that there is no deep mystery about the existence and normative force of moral laws. Nor do they depend on some divine, transcendental or otherwise non-natural realm for their existence and operation. I will argue on the basis of an analogy between traffic laws and moral laws. If there is a sufficient natural explanation for the origin and continued existence for traffic laws and sufficient reason to obey them, and if moral laws are like traffic laws in the relevant respects, then there is a sufficient natural explanation for the existence of moral laws and their normative force.
In moral philosophy, it is the normative character of moral laws that has drawn much attention. The obligatoriness of moral laws—the apprehension that we 'ought' to obey moral laws even when they are not in our favour—is considered a deep mystery by metaphysicians. They are considered deeply enigmatic, as declarations of moral obligation are very different to descriptive statements of fact. Metaphysicians have looked to some out-of-the-ordinary realm to dispel the mystery. I have in mind here schemes that try to ground ethics in the workings out of the universe, such as Hegel's Absolute or the mystical One of Perennial Philosophy or the moral unfolding of the universe in Process Philosophy. I also include here Platonic Forms of the Good and theologies that try to ground morality in the nature or commands of God.
Such metaphysical pursuits, I think, create unnecessary barriers to accepting the demands of moral obligations. To accept the particular moral rules advocated by such a metaphysician, one must first accept the truth of their grand metaphysical scheme. For example, to accept the moral prohibition against abortion, one must first accept the existence and commands of the Christian Evangelical God. To accept the moral admonition to keep the Sabbath holy, one must first buy into the existence and demands of Yahweh. Putting these idiosyncratic moral commands to the side, even to ward off nihilism, the metaphysician requires us to buy into some kind of other-worldly scheme to accept common-sense moral rules, such as 'Do not kill' and 'Do not lie'.
A naturalistic explanation of moral laws, on the other hand, avoids these problems of the metaphysician's own making. By accepting a more down-to-earth explanation, it no longer becomes necessary for any person or group to buy into the normative force of moral laws by first accepting some grand but imponderable metaphysical grounding for such laws. By leaving aside such controversial and divisive philosophical castles in the air, we are able to more easily ground our basic moral judgments in that which we all have in common.
That is the task I have set myself for this essay: to show how our system of moral laws is essentially no different to other systems of rules that we humans have created for governing various kinds of social behaviour. To illustrate my case, I have chosen the system of traffic rules.
The analogy I draw in this essay between moral rules and other human conventions is not new. The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume [1777: sec. iv/210] drew just this analogy with the regulation of highway traffic in his Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding in which he wrote:
They cannot even pass each other on the road without rules. Waggoners, coachmen, and postilions have principles, by which they give the way; and these are chiefly founded on mutual ease and convenience.
The structure of this essay is as follows. In the next section, I will outline what I see as the five key similarities between traffic rules and moral rules and present supporting evidence for each. In Section 3, I highlight other key similarities between the two systems of rules. Section 4 portrays a handy metaphor that further illustrates the point I am making. In the final section, I deal with objections to my analogical argument for a naturalist ethics.
