Moral Ontology Vs Moral Epistemology – Let’s Get Clear

I recently offered a critique in a private Facebook group on the moral theory proposed by Michael Huemer called ethical intuitionism. (Let me say before I continue on  in this direction that I very much like a lot of Huemer’s thinking, and believe his work is worth picking up.) The claim of Huemer is that we can know of the existence of objective morality through intuition alone. The objection I made is that I don’t quite see how. I said that Huemer may have been guilty of confusing categories–of offering us a possible moral epistemology, or a way of knowing good from bad, right from wrong–but that that itself does not suffice as a grounds for moral ontology, or whether good/bad, right/wrong, exist to begin with.

Many people who responded to my critique also seemed to lack clarity in terms of moral philosophy, specifically on this issue or ontology vs epistemology. So, allow me to explain.

Moral ontology is the study of the metaphysical nature of good and bad (moral values) and right and wrong (moral duties), and whether these things really exist.

Now, to say that something really exists is to say that something is objective, which means that something is a public, or shared experience. It is, in other words, independently existing of any human opinion. We might also say that for good/bad, right/wrong to be objective, these values and duties must be valid and binding regardless of what any one human–or even all humans–thinks about them.

The claim which Huemer is making is that moral values and duties are, in fact, objective, and that we can know this from intuition alone. I’ll present my fuller objection to that in a minute. But first.  

Moral epistemology (OTOH) is the study of knowledge–or how we come to know–of what is good and bad, right and wrong. This is not totally disconnected, but is distinct from, moral ontology. Perhaps there really does exist some state of affairs which is appropriate to call “morality”. Fair enough. Now, maybe we know what that state of affairs is like, or maybe we don’t. It is certainly possible that there could be some truly good/bad, right/wrong part of reality, and for us to know quite literally nothing about it, or only very little about it. That, I think, would be weird — especially since duty implies ought and since ought implies can, I believe this position would be hard to justify — but still, it is at least possible.

We could equally, however, and more plausibly even, imagine that we have a sense or intuition of good/bad, right/wrong, but, in fact, this sense or intuition is totally illusory. And that is the problem which Huemer is now up against. Why take it that our intuition is reliable, or pointed at some actually existing state of affairs? Why not assume our moral intuition was merely developed as a helpful survival mechanism through the mechanism of evolution, and because of that, admit there really is no good/bad, right/wrong in the world, only our false impression of it? Why not take that position?

If Huemer wants to affirm the existence of some truly good/bad, right/wrong aspect of morality, then he needs to provide a foundation for it–to show that whatever came through evolution (if indeed that is the case) is “discovering” something, and not “inventing” it. If he makes the foundation intuition itself, then he has lost the argument. Remember what it means to be objective: For something to exist independent of any human opinion. But if morality is merely an invention of intuition, rather than a discovery, there goes the objectivity claim. Morality in that sense is purely subjective. It is not really real, at all.

If we want to say that morality is objective, we must trust that our intuition is helping us to grasp an actually existing state of affairs. But what is this actually existing state of affairs? Where do these moral values come from, and how do they impose upon us any sort of obligation to follow through on them? This is where the atheist–which I believe Huemer is–has a really difficult go of things, since on the assertion “God does not exist”, there is no place to ground the objectivity of moral values and duties. You can’t do it in nature, nor can you do it in human reason.

If, for example, morality were found in nature, we should then be able to detect it through the natural sciences. But we can’t detect morality through the natural sciences: Morality is not something that can be found in a test tube, or dissected in the lab. There is no empirical test that can be run to say whether that empirical test (or any empirical test) is (or was) the right thing to do. If, on the other hand, we attempt to ground morality solely in human reason, well, again, we’ve lost the claim to objectivity; we’re saying morality is entirely dependent on us as humans thinking about it, and therefore, there really does not exist any truly good or bad or right or wrong to begin with; there is only our (in this case, false) impression of it.

This, of course, is why many atheists are nihilists. They accept the conclusions of their godless worldview: That morality is all an illusion. Hence the famous proclamation of Nietzsche that “there are no objective moral facts”

But here is where I think Huemer can provide us with something useful. Because he says at one point that if the plausibility of one premise seems intuitively or obviously true, than we should accept that premise (unless there is some overriding defeator of it) over any other premise that seems less intuitively or obviously true that may be in contradiction of it. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. But now here’s the snag. Huemer is, on the one hand, and atheist, and, on the other, wanting to affirm objective moral values and duties. But these two claims are mutually conflicting. So, what I would suggest to Huemer is for him to abandon the weaker premise–the one which has no real intuitive obviousness behind it in the first place. He should reject atheism. And in doing so, this will allow him to affirm what is intuitively obvious: That something things really are good (like self-sacrifice for the saving of innocents), and other things really are evil (like torturing babies).

Let’s put this into a syllogism:

If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.

But objective moral values and duties do exist.

Therefore, God exists.

– Pat

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PS – There are, of course, a few objections to God being the source of moral values and duties, the most famous being Euthrypro’s dilemma. Unsurprisingly, this came up on the thread of my critique.

It goes: “Is something good because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good?”

I pointed out the problem with this objection. It’s a false dilemma.

A dilemma has the form of either A or not-A. Such as, either God exists or God does not exist. There is no third alternative. But in terms of the Euthyprho (always unsure if I’m spelling that right) objection, there is a third alternative: God wills something because He is good. In other words, morality is neither arbitrary (“because God wills it), nor is morality something higher than good (“because it is good”), rather morality is grounded in who God is, essentially. God just is the standard of moral goodness.

And this would fall right in line with our moral intuition, since some things (like torturing babies) seem necessarily bad, and not something that God could have willed any other way. But since morality is grounded in who God is and since God is as He is, necessarily–rather than morality being something God decided arbitrarily–we can affirm that intuition.

PPS – As for moral epistemology, I think ethical intuitionism is certainly not without merit, though it is (obviously) fallible. Reflection upon intuition/conscience surely does tell us something about good/bad, right/wrong, but it does not necessarily tell us everything. If it did, then people wouldn’t disagree as much as they do about what is right and wrong. I tend to learn more in the direction of natural law/virtue ethics from a proximate standpoint of moral epistemology. Being a theist and a Catholic, I would also say Revelation. It just makes sense that if (IF, IF, IF) God is the source and foundation of all morality, then He might at certain points throughout history give us some hints on how to behave.